Competitive Shopping

I bet you noticed the news video of people literally fighting over shopping specials yesterday. The folks were lined up at the doors waiting for the chance to sprint into the store and snag their prize before the other competitors at the door.

I have always been a ‘jock’. In high school we were made fun of by the ‘non-jocks’.

They had something stuck in their craw about jocks. I still don’t understand it. There is a popular cultural myth, prolonged by teenager targeted movies, where the jocks are evil and mean to the other kids in the school. My instincts tell me it is the jock mockers making movies in our culture and they just have not matured yet. I have never gotten this cultural thing assimilated into a comfortable place in my brain. The jocks I hung with never persecuted other kids. The adult jocks I hang with don’t persecute other people. Kids that were non-jocks hung out with us all the time. I must have gone to a different school than the one portrayed in the movies.

Much ado about nothing I think, but in the interest of continuing the cultural myth; my own observation.

I’m sure I recognized some of the non-jock mockers in the video I saw of competing shoppers yesterday. Some fell down; some were literally crawling back into the fight. Some were staggering in exhaustion halfway up the aisles. Arms were raised to register blows and one woman could not be interviewed since she could not intake the necessary oxygen, depleted in the fury of battle, and talk at the same time.

Which brings me to this; the mockers are competing for what they think will make them happy. Same as the jocks they fervently insist on mocking. So from the jocks to the mockers I offer the following advice.

If you are going to compete, for goodness sake get into competitive shape. Learn how to run, elbow, and fight. Yesterdays’ display of falling to the floor, reflexes so slow that you couldn’t put a notebook computer away when it sits right in front of you is a disgraceful display of competitive shopping. Shape up and quit being such a pitiful excuse for a competitive shopper. A solid effort by an Iraqi shopper hardened by tougher shopping conditions would kick your butt into Egypt.

I feel purged now, my very first blog rant!

Different subject now.

I was made aware of the fact that I am a bit eccentric in a sort of amusing fashion.

I was describing an acquaintance of mine to another ‘couple acquaintance’ as being a little bit eccentric. The couple was staring at me with amusement and then broke into hearty laughter simultaneously.

Naturally, I asked ‘what’?

The reply: “Like you’re NOT eccentric!”

Later. I’ll see you on the highway to eccentricity. I think it’s somewhere in Texas. I like it there.