i love to go shopping

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. (1 John 2:15-17 NLT)

I love to go shopping. I love to go the mall and to the grocery stores. I even like to walk around in Target or WalMart or TJ Maxx.

In fact I am the one in our family that buys the clothing. If my wife bought her own clothing, she would still dress like she did in 1977. I like for her to look good.

But my idea of shopping and Ella’s is different. I am tall and can see over all the racks. My idea of shopping is the long view. I look over the racks at all the clothes as I walk by. I do not like to go and finger them and consider them. If they are on a swivel rack, I will swivel it and look as I go past. Maybe I will feel them, but only quickly. If I like it from a distance, I will go closer and look but I want the fabric to feel good.

I hate to shop like Ella does. She likes to go into the clothes and look at them, feel them, consider them. She will also look at clothes that I have already dismissed as being unsuitable for her.

Unsuitable, before you ladies get your dander up, means that they are not her style or her color or her cut. She does not like low cut stuff, nor sheer stuff, nor tightly cut stuff. I can tell at a  glance whether or not the clothes will match her.

I also made a promise to her at some point in the past. I told her that I would not buy her anything that didn’t look good on her. Nor will I tell her something looks good simply because she wants it.

Somebody not long ago told me that was bad , because I would not humor her. But I explained that I do not want Ella to look bad, and that the waste of money when you do that is bad. And besides, you see women wearing things that just look terrible on them. Someone needed to love them enough to tell them that they didn’t look good.

The other day, I was waiting for her outside the fitting room at JC Penney’s and a guy was waiting there, too. We got to talking and his wife came out in a horrible looking blouse thing. It was a bad color for her and about two sizes too small. It was the wrong cut for her also, as she was large and it was the contemporary notched kind of cut.

But she liked it. So her husband liked it. He asked me what I thought. I knew I was up against a stacked deck, and it was none of my business that she looked like a fool, so I said something vague that was not lying so the Lord would not punish me. She went back and Ella came out in something that fit her well. I was glad.

The things I buy are classic and will last her for several years. She has clothing she has had for a long time and it still looks good. She takes care of her stuff and it lasts.

I also like clothes that are on sale. The other day I bought her three sweaters she wanted from Dillard’s that only cost $7 each. It was a 70% sale with 30% more off. She loves them and they will last her for a long time.

I looked at them for a while until I found out they were about to have a sale. We waited until that day and bought them. She looks good and it doesn’t cost nearly as much as it could have. Since she doesn’t buy current stuff, stuff that just came out, and gets it on sale, she saves a lot of money. The stuff on year-end sale at Dillard’s is the stuff that comes to the lower priced stores next year. So she is still ahead of the game.

But I hate to do the kind of shopping she does. I shop quickly. More of the hunting shopping. She does the gathering shopping. I look over the field and shoot the likely prospects. She goes in and looks at it all. Man thing versus woman thing. Men are hunters, women are gatherers, as it goes.

The same with jewelry. I have bought every piece of jewelry she has. But I do not like to look at it like she does. I go by a rack of jewelry and spin it. As it goes by I can tell what is on it. And I can tell if I want it, if it is the color that will go with her clothes, if it is her style.

When it comes down to it, I suppose, I created her style. I buy more timeless stuff, stuff that will go for years. Her style is updated classic, a kind of relaxed casual classic.

But all of this means that by the time I am through in a section, she is halfway through. And since she has to ride a scooter, she can’t see the larger view.  So I wait on her a lot. Even though I am the one who buys, I wait on her.

This same method of shopping goes for grocery stores. I have a route in each store to take and invariably take it each time I go. And each time I go I get a good buy on something. Marked down meat, stuff on sale, all that. We eat well, and because we have a lot of people over, the Lord blesses us with lots of good stuff from the grocery store.

I guess the same goes for the other stores, TJ Maxx and stores like that. I walk through really quite quickly and see what I want to see and buy only if something really jumps out at me. Thrift stores, too, although those are losing their value to me. I have all the clothes I will need until I die probably, and really so does she, although I like to buy new things for her. We have also scaled out lives back enough we don’t need much. So there isn’t much at thrift stores that I want anymore. Black coffee cups and mirrors (which I collect) msotly.

Of course, I also go to the mall and the stores to watch people. The mall is good exercise in walking and I kind of view them as a museum of modern culture. You see a lot of the foolishness of people in both the clothes and the people.