How We Shop

.We've all been dealing with changes of every kind this year, to put it mildly, but a couple of days ago I found myself contemplating how different shopping is for me. Not just because of the pandemic, but because everything changes.

When I was a kid, there were five-and-ten-cent stores, like Woolworths, for less expensive items. By my teenage years, larger discount stores were popping up. But we did most of our shopping in department stores. They had just about everything.

Fast forward several decades. I was wandering through a local department store looking for something particularly well-hidden when I stumbled upon the toy department. I remember being amazed that anyone would shop for toys in this store where the prices were so much higher than at K-Mart. Only later did it occur to me that once upon a time, I did too.

Fast forward another couple of decades or so, and I, like most of us, do the majority of my shopping sitting at my computer. I'm grateful that I had time to get used to this before it became a necessity. 

I'd be looking for an item that suddenly wasn't available--my shampoo or socks--and traipsing from one store to another without success. I'd complain to one of  my daughters who inevitably said, "Have you looked online?"

Well no, I hadn't thought of that. Now I look. And now I pretty much look online right away.

 It actually happened first with books. Once when I needed a new prosthesis and wasn't walking more than I had to, I discovered Amazon. I was buying books for me and for gifts and because I was my church's librarian. It seemed like the greatest gift to tap a few keys and have boxes of books show up at my door.

I also know that, while it wasn't me alone, I contributed to the closing of so many actual bookstores. And possibly other type of sores as well. I miss browsing, reading spines, checking out the new releases.

So I sometimes worry, just a little, that when the pandemic has finally cleared out, my favorite stores won't come back. I'll miss them. It takes more time, but I've always taken pleasure in certain aspects of shopping.

There are times when I want to see and feel, and sometimes smell, the 3-D things I'm looking for with my 3-D self.