Wallet Shopping

After successfully completing my iPod exchange, burning my extended warranty, I thought last night would be an appropriate time to finish my Christmas shopping. My mother told me to get a new wallet for my father. These days, we kids collectively buy crap for our parents, but I made an exception. My mother informed me that his wallet has been falling apart for quite a while. Whenever she suggests he pick up a new one, he says that I bought him the wallet for Christmas. I remember that I did buy a wallet for him for Christmas one year, but I think I was in college, back when you only used text commands to send email and when our VAX servers would routinely crash on Friday nights, leaving us without any newsgroup fix for the weekend. I'm guessing his wallet is pretty ratty, though I haven't regularly seen it since high school, when I would take $2 for lunch.

After completing my surrogate shopping mission at Target, picking up headphones for my nephew, I drove over to the Mall, yes the Mall where I spent many hours of my childhood in tow to my mother. I figured Sears would have a wallet section, so I started there. I walked into the pick-up section, triggering Gabby, the automated TV voice, letting me know how to pick up my order. I, as usual, made a bee line to where I thought the wallets were. Times have changed, and so has the Sears layout. After completely blitzkrieging the 40,000 square foot store in about three minutes, I found the purses. I figured the wallets would be nearby, but had no luck.

Next I headed to Boston Store, which used to be Prange's before that closed and Boston Store jumped across the way, from the site that was once Gimbles. Again, I started blitzkrieging and immediately found the purses. My kindergarten-learned apples and oranges analogy is useless in the Men's/Women's shopping arrangement as I found no wallets by the isles and isles of purses. Note: these isles were filled with many Midwestern-teddy-bear-sweatshirt-frumpy women. I carried on blitzkrieging, past the mannequins with which I conversed when my mother was taking too much time shopping, right into the Men's area and found a little turn shelf thing with wallets on them. It took me 1.578 seconds to know that these wallets sucked and that I was out of luck there. I completed my loop of the store, noting that the Men's jacket section must be where Midwestern-wolf-pack-shirt-frumpy men made their rounds, as the space dedicated to jackets was in 1:1 proportion with the purse section, unlike the puny wallet section.

I carried on, passing all the calendar, game, and painting kiosks in the general area and found Wilson's Leather Somethingorother. I figured they may have wallets and was right. Again, it was just and turning shelf thing, but after 3 minutes, I found one that didn't suck and didn't include any plastic picture holders. If my father still had my freshman year picture, I'd just assume he throw it. It then took me about four minutes to hike my ass through the general area, through Sears, past Gabby, and out to my car.

Anyway, this is how I shop. Since I rarely buy DVDs and prefer to hold my music as mp3's, I really no longer browse while shopping. Sometimes I wander at Best Buy or somewhere, given my obsession with gadgets, but I have my fill of those. I guess this helps me avoid the 95% of humanity that I do not like.

Anyway, Merry Christmas or whatever! I'm done with my shopping!