I'm a lousy consumer

So – what did you get?

According to stats, consumer spending this Christmas was up 4700 percent, or something ludicrous. Household debt loads got another good boost and that can only be welcome news for Visa, Mastercharge, banks, and assorted other purveyors of money you don’t actually possess, except on the most temporary basis.

I’m a very bad citizen because I don’t play that consumerism game at all well. I have a 14-year-old car that runs well (except when it doesn’t), we have every household appliance one would hanker for (other than a dishwasher, I’d really, really like a dishwasher, OK?), and we don’t have a big, flat screen TV. I suspect, and please correct me if I’m in error, that no matter what sort of state-of-the-art TV I owned, the programming would still be shitty. So, I remain content to watch shitty programs on my decade old non-flat-screen TV which still works like a charm.

So, what did I get? I’d like to say I got peace, love, security and joy for all of humankind but, as altruistic as I might be, that doesn’t seem to be happening. So, on a more mundane level, my favorite gifts were some art supplies, which means there is a domestic suggestion I should get off my cute li’l bum (I’ve been told) and become creative once again. Good thing, too. I just checked, and the last painting I completed was in June. Not good enough. The world can only agog with anticipation for so long before it moves on to look at the efforts of others.

Otherwise, I unwittingly passed by the materialistic thing about 15 years ago, and have felt blessed by that ever since. I was once married to a shopaholic, and that was a bit frightening. Today (no hippie impulses influencing me) I am quite happy to only buy what I feel I need and then when I spend money – which I do – it is for necessities or such things as travel. An ability to purchase experience of any sort is superior to anything material. Bought experience represents a certain freedom for me. And, if I have freedom, I am blessed.

As for Wendy: Well, if I had been a less-than-honest person, I could have given her an item that was quite dazzling. I was walking along the street about a week before Christmas when I espied, lying on the sidewalk, one of those very, very, high-end and classy Burberry scarves – you know, the beige plaid ones in the same pattern as the linings of the equally posh raincoats and topcoats. I picked it up. It was dry, and had obviously just been dropped. I looked high and low for whoever might have dropped it. Really, I did. I saw nobody in either direction. So, I thought I could box it up, wrap it and present it as a gift. But, some sort of residual honesty within kept me from doing that. I merely passed it on to Wendy a few days before Christmas.

Other than a few special things, like earrings, I mainly bought Wendy undies. She said she needed new ones. And, fortunately for me, I am not a man who gets embarrassed by purchasing unmentionables for a loved one. Actually, I kind of enjoy it (immensely, but I won’t go into why). So, I bought her workaday skivvies, and some more exotic confections of the frou-frou sort. That made it very easy for me.

Anyway, I hope you got all that you wanted – and needed.