My point...and I do have one...

Was feeling kind of funky yesterday, with the impending rain and a lot of extra achy stuff and vacillating hormones, so I channeled the spirit of my Grandpa Dave (nothing stopped this guy; he’s several blog entries in himself), took a couple of Motrin, did a little self-hypnosis and husband and I went out shopping. We were out of many of my hamster-food staples, plus I wanted to hit the cheapo DVD racks at Best Buy, to find something laugh-my-ass-off funny. Also we we’d agreed to check out TiVo, as I went through a cost-benefit analysis with husband (which amounted to the currently advertised rebate off the box and the monthly service fee versus his time and frustration spent hunting for the tape he thought he put “Boston Legal” on and my time and frustration waiting for him to find it and listening to the swearing and watching the steam come out his ears and the vein bulge on his forehead while he looked). Which amounted to a mutual decision that it was worth checking out. Ditto, we did the same process for at least pricing a second computer. If both of us continue in the trend I’m seeing and both start doing more work at home, both needing computers and internet connections, then by my cost-benefit analysis, a second workstation would be cheaper than a divorce. Or a good lawyer when I strangle him.

I don’t know what it is about Best Buy, but something happens to men the second they walk through the door. Can’t be that friendly greeter (they always have an average-guy type at each entrance, who was probably chosen by some demographic focus group to appeal to the average-guy gene in anyone of the male gender, be he more William F. Buckley or Busby Berkely, so he’ll want to buy all kind of electronic toys), so I’m guessing it’s the magnetic field. They’ve programmed a special type of proprietary particle energy so that it harmonizes with the Y chromosome and attracts all men directly to the big screen TVs. I’m sure that if I look hard enough I’ll find the patent application on Google.

Really. Every time we go in I have to steer him away. And it’s not just me. I’ve seen other couples, the woman’s arm casually looping itself through her mate’s, herding him toward other parts of the store. “No, honey, we can’t spend four thousand dollars on a plasma TV as big as the side of a panel truck. Remember? We came here to get a new battery for our cell phone.” Or price iPods for little Johnny’s birthday. Or whatever.

So we find the TiVo, and husband begins the ritual male electronic-shopping dance. First circle around the product. Place finger against cheek in thinking pose. Read the big print on the box (only squids read small print, or installation instructions). At some point, an average guy in a blue shirt will approach. Husband looks skittish, like he’d been caught knitting.

AG: “Can I help you?”
Husband: “Yeah. Uh…” He lowers his voice. “How does this work?”
AG: “You got a high-speed phone connection?”
Husband: “Uh…I need one?”
AG: (shrugs like we’ve just rolled in on some manure truck from Kansas) “Well, just a regular phone will work.”
Wife: “We have one of those.”
Husband shoots wife dirty look.
Husband: “So I heard if you buy lifetime service it’s only $300? Plus the box? Minus the rebate?”
AG (pauses): “Well. That service fee is only for the life of the box.”
Husband (shooting wife dirty looks so she won’t even think about making any potentially emasculating comments) “So how long do they last?”
AG: “Can’t say. Could be four, five years. Could get a bum box and last a year and a half.”
Wife: “How long is the rebate going to last?” Because the thing about being together for so long is that because of this new, potentially costly variable, I know that husband will want to think the whole concept through for, say, about a week. I also know that he has been programmed by his father and all generations of men in his lineage preceding him to now go to every electronics store within a fifty-mile radius to try to find a better deal.
AG: “The special ends today.” Before either of us can react he adds, “But it goes on special like, every few weeks, so keep checking it out.”

And so, after putting this on hold and glossing through the computers, we went shopping for DVDs. I know, this is stupid, but “The Wedding Singer” is one of my guilty pleasures, but it was only ten bucks, so I picked it up. I’m a little nostalgic for the eighties. I “came of age” as they say, in the seventies, but that was such a confused, stupid era that I’ve disowned all the fads and frou-frou from those times. Come on. Billy Beer? Pet rocks? Disco? Get real. The eighties could be just as ridiculous, but at least there was something with a little meat going on. A little style. Joe Jackson. English Power Pop. Flashdance clothes. Reagan kind of sucked but at least we were having fun with our culture. And I can’t even look at Jon Lovitz without smiling. But maybe I liked the eighties a little too much. What I found scary a couple of Halloweens ago was not a ghoul or goblin but putting together my costume. I went as Madonna in her “Like a Virgin” era and every bit of that costume came from my own closet. The dress was the one I wore to my tenth college reunion, when puffy skirts with lace crinolines were back in. The denim jacket – well, who didn’t have one of those? The lace gloves were part of a gag gift from my bridal shower. The fishnets were actually from the early nineties, when all the pantyhose had some texture or pattern or something crawling up your calf, the feminizing reaction to all those masculine suits with the shoulder pads. The boots were the ones I wore to work every other day – black lace-up anklets with a chunky heel.

Only one of my neighbors knew who I was playing. I didn’t think I was being as esoteric as, say, the year I went as the movie “Romancing the Stone,” dressed as a Mick Jagger groupie, or the time I ratted out my hair and grabbed an empty whisky bottle and went as Janis Joplin.

Sometimes I just think too much.

Meanwhile we’ve purchased groceries, stopped off to pick up take-out for dinner, and we’re home, and husband re-commences his search for “Boston Legal.” And I make my own cost-benefit analysis. I go off to do something else.