Things That I Would Buy

By G. E. Shuman

            

           It has been said, or at least I read somewhere, so someone must have said it, that a man will spend two dollars for a one dollar item that he needs, and a woman will spend one dollar for a two-dollar item that she doesn’t need, but it’s on sale. I’m not sure if that isn’t too much of a generalization concerning the sexes, but in my family it seems to hold true. 

After about twenty-five years of retail store management, I was done with the idea of shopping for much of ANYTHING a long time ago. Having said that, here are twenty things that I definitely WOULD buy, if I could, but I would not necessarily shop for them in this order:

1.     A cell phone that I didn’t have to immediately purchase a sixty-dollar rubber case for, just so that it wouldn’t break if dropped from the couch cushion onto the living room carpet. (Couldn’t they just include a sixty-dollar rubber case in the box with the phone? They look like they probably cost about fifty cents to make.)

2.     A car that wouldn’t cost me a thousand dollars to repair if someone bumps it slightly in the shopping center parking lot. (Not that I go to such places often.)

3.     Dress shirts that really are no-iron. (Those no-iron tags in the collar always make me laugh, sort of, as I iron them.)

4.     A toaster that won’t burn my bagels, ever. (That really burns my buns.)

5.     A teeth whitener that actually works.

6.     A toilet bowl that cleans itself. (Maybe the teeth whitener people could help make that. Yuck. But porcelain is like tooth enamel, right?) Yuck, again. (I could be overthinking things.)

7.     A day with Samuel Clemens. (For obvious reasons.)

8.     A moon rock. (Who wouldn’t buy that?)

9.     One more day of life. (Okay, so how about two, while we’re at it?)

10. Cheap printer ink. (Number nine would probably be easier to buy.)

11. Batteries that don’t die, or at least not at the most inconvenient time.

12. A meeting with an alien, (and I don’t mean your uncle from Montreal.)

13. A bathroom scale that says what it should say, even if it’s inaccurate.

14. Success for all my kids and grandkids.

15. Car brakes that never wear out, or at least not on the day you’re leaving on vacation. (Include car tires in this, please.)

16. Zero calorie lasagna. (For obvious reasons.)

17. A few moments with God. (Scratch that. I already have those.)

18. Fat free bacon. (You’re not even questioning this one, right?)

19. Round bread or square bologna. (I know, I’m overthinking again.)

20. Last but not least, I really wish someone would invent a car air freshener that smells exactly like freshly ground coffee when you first open the bag. Would this really be that hard to do? (Hey, maybe I’ll put a bag of coffee in the car. Scratch this one, too.)

So, please, someone out there, get to work, make these things, (except for numbers 17 and 20,) and get rich.