Shop till you… stop?

Hey, where’d everybody go? My daughter and I set out the day after Thanksgiving with the plan to find some bargains for friends and family on our Christmas lists. There was a time, not that long ago, when lists in hand and newspaper ads luring us to the “must-have” gift of the year, we’d rouse ourselves from our warm, cozy beds and set off before the crack of dawn to hit the mall. Or Kmart, Walmart — whoever had the best bargains to be found.

The store manager would open the doors with a flourish, taking his very life in his hands to allow frenetic shoppers to get to the most-wanted toy the Sears catalog teased their children with. The more hype surrounding “it,” the more in demand “it” became. To jog your memory, remember the Cabbage Patch Doll? Atari? For the record, I was never a part of that craziness. I don’t leave my house, especially in the winter, until the sun is pretty high in the sky.

We left the house at 10, a reasonable hour for people with no little kids on our Christmas list to hunt out that one-of-a-kind, “I’ll DIE without it!” toy or game. Now, maybe we missed the big rush, if there was one, at Target, but we had no problem parking, finding just what we needed, paying for it and heading north to the mayhem we would soon encounter when we hit Strongsville’s SouthPark Mall, aka “maul.”

They must have had a snowburst of some sort before we got there because the parking lot was a scene of total chaos, with some cars parked three deep. Marked parking spots? Forget about it. It looked like a case of every man for himself. We found a spot near a less popular entrance, and of course, since the parking lot was a sea of silver, black and white cars, finding ours when we were ready to leave the madness became a challenge.

I have to say we encountered only pleasantness from our fellow shoppers and clerks, some of whom had been on the job since five in the morning. Lines were long at cash registers, but we didn’t hear any whining — from adults or children.

It took us quite a while, but we finally spotted a group of women — I’m not sure if they’d be called a gaggle or a gang — but they were decked out in holiday attire, identifying them as members of the same clan in case one strayed from their shopping mission. In the old days, there would usually be any number of female shopping groups in matching Santa hats, elf sweaters or necklaces of jingle bells. They, if nothing else, were bound to be having a right jolly old time on this special shopping day.

My daughter was searching for a particular item and I think, after an exceptionally long wait for a simple lunch and encountering excessively long lines of shoppers waiting to part with their money, she jokingly said she could probably bring the item up on her phone, order from Amazon and have it waiting for her when she got home. COVID changed the shopping experience for all of us in many ways. Some good. Some not so good. But it is, like they say, what it is. No more Blue Light specials. No more beating down the doors and running over store managers. No more fighting over that “gotta have it” prized possession.

Kinda takes the fun out of shopping these days. Ah, but what the heck—’tis the season. Have a little glass of Christmas cheer. It’ll be over before you know it.