Shopping, Ugh
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
‘Christmas comes but once a year and then it keeps you hopping
What to buy for mother dear and father dear whenever you go shopping.’
Do you remember that little song. It’s been around forever, or seems like it. I remember when I first heard it, it was on the radio and was an advertising jingle for some department store but I can’t remember which one. It might even have been Peoples Credit Jewelers.
Peoples Credit Jewelers for diamonds, for watches! Remember that one?
At least back then the radio stations started playing Christmas carols and songs in December, not in October like they do now. And it gets earlier every year. Last June I was in Winners trying on a bikini thong and distinctly heard ‘Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus’. Although, come to think of it, it was the sales ladies when I stepped out of the change booth to see myself in the full-length mirror. I really have to lose some weight. (I don’t know if you stayed up to watch the Jake Paul – Mike Tyson fight but in the interview before the match we saw Mike’s bare bum as he walked away. Mine looks just like his only pink.)
I’ll give you a few moments to picture that before I continue…
As I was saying Christmas advertising has always been a bit over the top, but nothing like it is now. A few years ago it was a good time for fictional characters to make a few bucks. Scrooge got hired by Canadian Tire for a year or two and no doubt made a pile of cash for Scrooge, Marley and Associates. Whether Chuck Dickens’ great, great, grand-children got in on the windfall, I have no idea. Somehow I doubt it.
Coca Cola has been keeping Santa on the payroll for years with enough cash to work Christmas Eve and take the rest of the year off doing whatever jolly old elves do which I imagine isn’t much. I mean he’s close to 400 years old. I can’t do anything and compared to him I am just a kid.
It’s odd we never see old Claus anywhere except at Christmas time, not even at Walmart changing the designer jeans Sandra bought him for Christmas. Size 32 waist, can you believe it? That’s what she bought him. Now there’s a woman living in a dream world. The last time Claus had a 32 waist, he was four years old and pulling a little wooden wagon through the front doors of the Willy Wonka Chocolate Company.
Think about it, you never see him on Black Friday, Boxing Day, or at the January sales. He’s nowhere. I suspect he goes south with the snowbirds. They may see him – lying on a beach in Cancun, or floating in a pool by the Caribbean with a Pina Colada in one hand and some chick in a bikini sitting on the other.
Snowbirds know where he goes but they keep that kind of information to themselves. They ply the old goat with booze so they get first crack at the goodies next Christmas.
It’s bad enough us poor people have to stay up here in the dark freezing our tails off, the damn snowbirds are by the pool kissing up to old Santa. I wouldn’t put it past some of those little witches to do more than ply him with drinks either. Some women will stoop pretty low if they think it might get them a nice sandwich toaster or an air fryer under the tree. It’s disgusting what some women will do for a kitchen appliance.
We have a friend who got a brand new kitchen one year. I wonder what she had to do for that.
Christmas shopping is easy for a woman, after all she has all year to do it. Her husband has to wait until the 24th of December. It doesn’t seem fair but them’s the rules. We didn’t set them, we just obey them. Not only is there not much time, there are not that many gifts left at Shopper’s and sometimes they close early, like 11 o’clock at night. By then, a lot of the good jewelry has been picked over and their Rolex watches are down to two or three of the cheap models, some so outdated they run on car batteries. Last year I was lucky enough to find a pair of knee-high stockings for Mary and they were on special. They should have been fine but the left leg wasn’t the same shade as the right, or the other way round. Regardless she had to take them back and I had lost the receipt, another $4.50 down the drain.
This year I think I am going to start Christmas shopping earlier, same day of course, but shortly after lunch.
(Image Supplied)
