Something From Nothing

JournalNews column

She doesn’t like her voice so never sings out loud, but I could hear a song in her breath, a melody flowing from her contented smile as she steered her cart through the aisle of bargains.

“What are you grinning about?” I had to ask.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just happy to be shopping.”

It’s not like we’d gone there to blow a bunch of money for the joy of spending or anything. I needed some cleaning supplies and she was, I thought, along for the ride.

But for her, it was more. It was a bonus therapy session. That’s what she calls it: “Shopping therapy.” Give her a cart with four good wheels and an aisle of bargains and her mind wanders off to the happy place.

“What is it about shopping that a gives you so much pleasure?” I asked later.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But I’ve always liked to shop. When I was a little girl, that’s what my mom and I did to make me happy. She would ground me, then feel bad about it so we’d go shopping. There were times I’d misbehave just so she’d take me shopping.

“It was one way that we could spend time together.”

“And I suppose you’ve passed this shopping gene on to your daughter, too?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “She better find a good job when she grows up.”

So I asked her mother about this shopping dynasty. She told me was never much of a shopper, but after her divorce many years ago, she was seeing a counselor, a social worker, who advised her to go out once a week and buy something just for herself. A way to boost self-esteem, I suppose. A chance to be selfish once in a while.

“So I was at the store and I saw a pack of Post-It notes that had little angels printed on it,” mother said. “I thought, ‘You don’t get very many of them for two dollars,’ but it was something I liked, so I bought it.”

So did it help?

“Oh, yeah,” mother said. “I love to buy things for myself now.”

But her daughter, she said, was a natural shopper.

“I took her shopping for clothes one time and I picked out a whole cart full of cute stuff,” mother said. “We went to put it in lay-away and she wouldn’t let me. She said, ‘If you can’t pay for it now so I can take it home, I don’t want it.’”

So by now, I’m thinking this is deep. Maybe this is a vestige of the hunter/gatherer mentality of our ancestors. For the same reason men like sports (generally speaking) as a link to their hunting past, so women like to shop (generally speaking) as a throwback to foraging for food.

And that’s maybe why when men shop for something, let’s say “shoes,” they conquer the shoes and come back with shoes and nothing else. But a woman will go shopping for shoes (as if she really needs another pair) and come back with a carload of shoes because they found such a bargain, or a carload of anything but shoes because they couldn’t find a suitable pair, but found all this other cool stuff to satisfy the urge to shop.

Of course, there are exceptions that prove the rule. I, for one, loathe spectator sports for the most part. When I shop, it’s because I need something. It’s rarely recreational (unless I’m going simply to keep some female company) or therapeutic. When I do, it usually results in feelings of guilt, either for spending money I shouldn’t spend or because I’ve simply added to my storehouse of unnecessary stuff.

But the women I know tell me it’s all for the good of the cause.

“Even if it’s just groceries,” my shopping friend said, “that’s fine by me. Shopping is shopping. I may have 10 boxes of Tide in the laundry room already, but I know we’ll use it eventually — and I’ve saved some money.

“I may not be the wealthiest person in town,” she added, “but at least we’ve got plenty of food in the house.”