CityView Magazine

Confessions Most people do not know this, but my par- ents had a mixed marriage: My mother has al- ways loved to shop, and my father only shopped under duress, usually once a year. While I inherited many of my mother's traits — her green eyes, her facility with language, her tendency to go gray early in life — I definitely inherited my father's shopping gene, or should I say, his non-shopping gene. To put it plainly, I hate to shop. If the American economy depended solely upon my shop- ping habits, it would collapse. Malls would disappear from the landscape, and every Walmart would close its doors forever. There would, however, be lots of bookstores, particularly the small, independent kind that used to exist everywhere until the large chains and the Internet drove them out of business. If I didn't look so much like my mother and her mother, I would consider the possibility that I was left on the doorstep by fairies. Hard-core shoppers, neither one ever passed by a store that didn't entice them inside. My mother especially loves dollar stores, where she has spent countless hours sort- ing through stacks of holiday dish towels and sports-themed plastic cups. My grandmother loved dime stores (Do you re- member those?) because of their candy counters and their popcorn machines. I have vivid memories of going to Woolworth's with my grandmother whenever I would spend the night with her. A shamelessly indulgent grandparent, she would buy me any- thing I wanted, and I always wanted chocolate. I can remem- ber standing in front of the candy counter like it was the gateway to paradise (which, in a way, it was) while carefully selecting my treat. Would it be chocolate-covered raisins? M&Ms? Hershey kisses? I probably devoted more time and mental energy to those choices than I have ever spent picking a presidential candidate, and with greater success. I would shiver with excitement as the clerk measured out my order and placed it on the scale. (The first time I ever saw a picture of Lady Justice, the one wearing a blindfold and holding a scale, my initial reaction was that the scale was obviously missing a quarter-pound of chocolate-covered peanuts.) I would then take my paper bag full of candy, clutch it tightly to my chest, and dream of the moment when the two of us could finally be alone (I now feel that way about Chardonnay). If only I had as much enthusiasm about shopping in gen- 14 | November/December • 2011 on second thought OF A Non-Shopaholic eral as I once had about dime store con- fections. I have tried, particularly in the com- pany of other women, to pretend to enjoy shopping, but I always feel like a fraud. After all, aren't women supposed to enjoy shopping? At least that is one of the more popular stereotypes about our gender. Women are supposed to enjoy shopping, especially in large groups, just as men enjoy drinking beer and watching sports on television. Never was my dislike of shopping more apparent than when I was in California several years ago with my sister and a group of her friends. One of the women in the group was a world-class shopper — if the Olympics had a shopping event, this woman would have won the gold medal and set a world record, all at the same time. When she went into a store, she had a gleam in her eye that I have only seen in middle-aged men at the beach as they gaze at young girls in bikinis. It was a look of extreme hunger coupled with just a touch of insan- ity. I realized very quickly that no one was going to outshop her, and since I don't like shopping anyway, I was not about to compete. To this day, I still don't know how our plane got off the ground for the flight home. She did not ship any of her pur- chases; she carried everything home with her — clothes, shoes, handbags, wine, even glassware. In fact, she had to buy an extra suitcase to carry all of her belongings. Amaz- ingly, she was not charged for excess baggage. I bought only one book, which I managed to squeeze into my carry-on. My sister's friend should have taken a page out of my fa- ther's shopping playbook. The only time he ever entered a department store was on Christmas Eve, just before closing time. He would go to the men's department and purchase one pair of 100% cotton pajamas as a Christmas gift for his father. He would ask the clerk to wrap his purchase, he would give the cashier his money, he would take his package, and he would quickly leave the store. No fuss, no muss. And he would not shop again until the following Christmas Eve. CV Got your own thoughts about shopping or anything else? You can email Mary at maryzahran@gmail.com BY MARY ZAHRAN

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