On Sunday, as I was driving to WalMart, the store I love to hate -- but the only place in Clarksville selling my favorite flavor of ramen and therefore a necessary undertaking -- I noticed a person on the side of the road in front of Pier 1, holding a double stacked sign about Borders Bookstore’s closing sale -- with savings of 50% to 70%. It is more accurate to say this person was wielding the sign like a giant shield and hiding behind it, as if anticipating a barrage of incoming firepower, or more likely afraid of being seen by someone they knew in the traffic at the intersection. I’m not sure holding a sign outside a mall entrance would be my favorite job either. But it’s a job, right? And lately they are pretty hard to come by, I don’t care what the highly-paid big economists declare about economic recovery. I have seen nothing of the sort.
National economy aside, the point is I was headed somewhere else, saw the sign, and changed course into the mall at the next entrance. The sign holder accomplished his or her purpose. Marketing objective fulfilled.
I hadn’t been to Borders in months, so I felt a little guilty showing up for the closing sale. The place was more packed with shoppers than I ever saw it in regular times. It brought tears to my eyes. I figured many of us were occasional shoppers bottom feeding off the going out of business sale. It made me sad, because if this many people shopped there on a regular basis, maybe they wouldn’t be closing. Then, to make myself feel better, I rationalized my own presence -- it’s not my fault a single hard cover book costs the equivalent of my weekly grocery budget and the only time books feel affordable is at a half-off sale. If things weren't so expensive or if I made more money maybe I could afford to be something more lofty than a bottom feeder.
Instead of strolling the grocery section of WalMart for my weekly supply of $1 frozen microwave dinners for lunch, granola bars for breakfast, and tomato paste to finish off my spaghetti sauce already in progress, I spent over an hour browsing the racks at Borders. Even the bookcases and fixtures were for sale. I fantasized about having one of the really tall wall units with the rolling ladder, and how that might FINALLY provide enough room for all my books. It was a lovely reverie, but then I woke up and remembered where I live, the height of my ceilings and size of my rooms, the reality that I really do plan to move someday, and that $600 for a rolling wooden ladder is NOT the wisest alternate use of September’s mortgage payment and I should send it to Bank of America as planned, thus keeping the book collection dry for another month, though still “organized” in piles on far too many horizontal surfaces.
In my wanderings, I picked up books -- eight, to be precise, at saving of 50% and 60% depending upon genre -- plus a blank journal, an installment in the graphic novel series I’ve been reading for the past year, two magazines (70% off) and a new pair of reading glasses in the strength recommended by the eye doctor at my recent $300 eye exam (including 6 months worth of contact lenses) which is unfortunately not covered by my $200 a month health coverage. About halfway through my hunting and gathering of books with titles as varied as “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions (Fourth Edition);” “Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life;” and “Crazy Aunt Purl’s Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair: True Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split;” and somewhere in the law book section strategically located next to the books about sex, the figure $100 popped into my head. I don’t know where it came from, or how it landed in my cranium, but after it arrived there I thought, “Ok, this little side trip is going to be the equivalent of the month’s grocery budget.” Maybe that's when I should have visited the financial management section.
Standing there at the intersection of books about legal defense and wills and “Secrets of a Call Girl” and the Illustrated Kama Sutra, I considered the sum of $100 and what it represented -- the number of hours at my desk ... the slightly more than two tanks of gas to get me to that desk and everywhere else for a two week period ... three months derby league dues plus a six-pack of pricey beer ... a third of the current cost of a round-trip plane ticket home. And then I said “screw it,” yes, out loud ... followed by a silent “I have a VISA card, what’s another $100 owed on top of the seven grand piled up in the three-and-a-half years since my divorce?” It’s that sort of thinking that got me back into credit card debt in the first place. But I kept shopping, grabbing a novel featuring a Jack Russell Terrier (half Moose!) and two books based in New England -- a novel set in colonial Andover, and “The Gardner Heist -- The true story of the world’s largest unsolved art theft;” a craft book about recycling wool sweaters into new creations .... another graphic novel, this one from the biography section. On the way to the register, I grabbed a copy of Cesar Milan’s magazine and one on Gothic Style and Beauty. No, I am not going goth .... it just amused me there was an entire glossy, full-color magazine about goth style and the challenges it can present in the workplace. The topic matter interested me as much as the expense undertaken for color ... I mean, really ... most of the pages are black! But hey, the red lipstick and tattoo ink really pop in the photos. I was proud of myself for completely avoiding the Self Help section, where I have already 'invested' far too much money on books telling me all the new and modern ways in which I am defective.
My total at the register? $100.01. Seriously. Almost dead on the money of my random price, save for one cent. I would actually have been under the amount if not for standing in line waiting and eyeballing those reading glasses at half-off. And then it was off to Walmart to stock up on that ramen I’ll be eating for a good long time, thanks to my spontaneous shopping trip, because even though it was on the credit card, I'll pay extra when I send in the payment. (At least that's what I tell myself now.) Bottom feeding at the bookstore means bottom feeding in the nutrition chain. But my soul will be nourished for a while with all these new books.
National economy aside, the point is I was headed somewhere else, saw the sign, and changed course into the mall at the next entrance. The sign holder accomplished his or her purpose. Marketing objective fulfilled.
I hadn’t been to Borders in months, so I felt a little guilty showing up for the closing sale. The place was more packed with shoppers than I ever saw it in regular times. It brought tears to my eyes. I figured many of us were occasional shoppers bottom feeding off the going out of business sale. It made me sad, because if this many people shopped there on a regular basis, maybe they wouldn’t be closing. Then, to make myself feel better, I rationalized my own presence -- it’s not my fault a single hard cover book costs the equivalent of my weekly grocery budget and the only time books feel affordable is at a half-off sale. If things weren't so expensive or if I made more money maybe I could afford to be something more lofty than a bottom feeder.
Instead of strolling the grocery section of WalMart for my weekly supply of $1 frozen microwave dinners for lunch, granola bars for breakfast, and tomato paste to finish off my spaghetti sauce already in progress, I spent over an hour browsing the racks at Borders. Even the bookcases and fixtures were for sale. I fantasized about having one of the really tall wall units with the rolling ladder, and how that might FINALLY provide enough room for all my books. It was a lovely reverie, but then I woke up and remembered where I live, the height of my ceilings and size of my rooms, the reality that I really do plan to move someday, and that $600 for a rolling wooden ladder is NOT the wisest alternate use of September’s mortgage payment and I should send it to Bank of America as planned, thus keeping the book collection dry for another month, though still “organized” in piles on far too many horizontal surfaces.
In my wanderings, I picked up books -- eight, to be precise, at saving of 50% and 60% depending upon genre -- plus a blank journal, an installment in the graphic novel series I’ve been reading for the past year, two magazines (70% off) and a new pair of reading glasses in the strength recommended by the eye doctor at my recent $300 eye exam (including 6 months worth of contact lenses) which is unfortunately not covered by my $200 a month health coverage. About halfway through my hunting and gathering of books with titles as varied as “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religions (Fourth Edition);” “Becoming a Life Change Artist: 7 Creative Skills to Reinvent Yourself at Any Stage of Life;” and “Crazy Aunt Purl’s Drunk, Divorced & Covered in Cat Hair: True Life Misadventures of a 30-Something Who Learned to Knit After He Split;” and somewhere in the law book section strategically located next to the books about sex, the figure $100 popped into my head. I don’t know where it came from, or how it landed in my cranium, but after it arrived there I thought, “Ok, this little side trip is going to be the equivalent of the month’s grocery budget.” Maybe that's when I should have visited the financial management section.Standing there at the intersection of books about legal defense and wills and “Secrets of a Call Girl” and the Illustrated Kama Sutra, I considered the sum of $100 and what it represented -- the number of hours at my desk ... the slightly more than two tanks of gas to get me to that desk and everywhere else for a two week period ... three months derby league dues plus a six-pack of pricey beer ... a third of the current cost of a round-trip plane ticket home. And then I said “screw it,” yes, out loud ... followed by a silent “I have a VISA card, what’s another $100 owed on top of the seven grand piled up in the three-and-a-half years since my divorce?” It’s that sort of thinking that got me back into credit card debt in the first place. But I kept shopping, grabbing a novel featuring a Jack Russell Terrier (half Moose!) and two books based in New England -- a novel set in colonial Andover, and “The Gardner Heist -- The true story of the world’s largest unsolved art theft;” a craft book about recycling wool sweaters into new creations .... another graphic novel, this one from the biography section. On the way to the register, I grabbed a copy of Cesar Milan’s magazine and one on Gothic Style and Beauty. No, I am not going goth .... it just amused me there was an entire glossy, full-color magazine about goth style and the challenges it can present in the workplace. The topic matter interested me as much as the expense undertaken for color ... I mean, really ... most of the pages are black! But hey, the red lipstick and tattoo ink really pop in the photos. I was proud of myself for completely avoiding the Self Help section, where I have already 'invested' far too much money on books telling me all the new and modern ways in which I am defective.
My total at the register? $100.01. Seriously. Almost dead on the money of my random price, save for one cent. I would actually have been under the amount if not for standing in line waiting and eyeballing those reading glasses at half-off. And then it was off to Walmart to stock up on that ramen I’ll be eating for a good long time, thanks to my spontaneous shopping trip, because even though it was on the credit card, I'll pay extra when I send in the payment. (At least that's what I tell myself now.) Bottom feeding at the bookstore means bottom feeding in the nutrition chain. But my soul will be nourished for a while with all these new books.
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