Shopping Mania

It was disturbing, but not altogether surprising, to hear that Black Friday actually began this year on Thursday.  Desperate retailers opened late on Thanksgiving night enticing shoppers with coffee and donuts, as if anyone really needed a pick-me-up to sustain himself following an afternoon of turkey, potatoes and pie.   Reports of stampedes and retail tugs of war belied those expressions of gratitude for good health that had been uttered around Thanksgiving tables only hours before.

 

Still, there is a certain conviviality in participating in this most American of rites.  It’s no fun feeling left out, and it’s hard to resist the promise of a one-time-only bargain.  By Friday afternoon, I found myself heading to the mall just to see what I was missing.   

Funny how a person can be in a crowd, and outside of it, at the same time. 

At the Galleria Shopping Mall

by Tony Hoagland

Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear,

there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs;

one of them singing news about a far-off war,

one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood

to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood.

And here is my niece Lucinda,

who is nine and a true daughter of Texas,

who has developed the flounce of a pedigreed blonde

and declares that her favorite sport is shopping.

Today is the day she embarks upon her journey,

swinging a credit card like a scythe

through the meadows of golden merchandise.

Today is the day she stops looking at faces,

and starts assessing the labels of purses;

So let it begin. Let her be dipped in the dazzling bounty

and raised and wrung out again and again.

And let us watch.

As the gods in olden stories

turned mortals into laurel trees and crows

                   to teach them some kind of lesson,

so we were turned into Americans

to learn something about loneliness.