If you send me to the store to get an item, there’s a pretty good likelihood that I’ll make it to the store, buy just that item, and return home with it. If you increase that number of items that you need me to get at the store, understand that you’ve decreased the likelihood of getting what you wanted to the point where a written list becomes necessary. And if you’ve made the addition of other tasks, like returning pop bottles or taking recycling to that trip to the grocery store know too, that you’ve really decreased the likelihood of success. In fact, unless it’s really important, never ask me to stop by the store on my way back from doing anything else.
All that may lead you to think that I’m a man with decreasing mental capacities, except it’s been this way for as long as I can remember; if that’s not too poor a choice of words.
But my wife likes to both multitask as well as to browse.
I’ve never seen her stop by a grocery store for just one thing. She may have only needed one particular item but the process of getting that one thing includes an obligatory lap around the store just “to see.”
(To see: verb, meaning: method of shopping used to find all the things you didn’t know you needed until you saw it on a store shelf. Once seen, purchase is inevitable; unstoppable. See also, “browse.”)
Browse?
Somewhere in my genetics, the chromosome that predisposes a person to simply “browse” or to just enter any kind of store just “to see” was cleaved from my DNA. I’m generally just as curious as the next person, just not in a consumer sort of way.
Marcy also enjoys a good estate sale. Unlike a grocery store, hardware store, department store, or any other retail type of store where you know, more or less, what’s inside, estate sales are wrapped in mystery, begging the browserly inclined to enter. Unless it was in the presale advertising, knowing what you’re going to find at a given estate sale is impossible … without stopping to browse through.
Having said that though, I’ve trained my mind to look for certain things and nuthin’ else. On the few occasions that I’ve found myself tagging along at an estate type of sale, I’ve naturally limited myself to a short list of things to be looking for.
Things like golf clubs. I’m always interested in old golf clubs; brass in particular. I’ve got a small collection of brands like old Bullseyes and Pings that I’ve reconditioned and I’m always in the mood for another one.
Long-handled tools are the other thing I’ll keep an eye out for. Not for the yard work left in them but because they make great bonfire pokers. A few summers ago I found an 8-foot long measuring stick that I thought would be an excellent poker. That it had been used to measure levels in the homeowners underground fuel tank scotched that use in pretty short fashion. But yes, old rakes, shovels, hoes, and the like work well as fire pokers.
And barring something strange, that’s all I’ll look for.
Some will take an hour moving from room to room, finding things they may or may not need. And there’s no denying that people find a bunch of great things. The fact is though that a person’s entire worldly existence may be sorted and priced for the general public’s slow rolling perusal and purchase, but not mine.
Unless, of course, I’d been sent there with a list.