I Don’t Need It. The Chickens Don’t Need It

TODAY IS OUR LAST FULL DAY FOOTLOOSE IN IRELAND. Tomorrow we turn in the car and spend the night in a hotel near the Dublin airport. On Sunday morning we climb into the big silver bird and fly back across the ocean. It is also the day when the Christmas shopping madness begins. I don’t think the two are really connected, but you never know. At just the time all of those online bargains appear I am quickly closing in on flat broke, busted, disgusted. My wallet can’t be trusted.

It’s a good thing I had no plans on buying anything more costly than a cheeseburger. No fries.

I am getting inundated with the ads, online and on TV, for all of those wonderful things I have no intention of buying. Sure, I’d like a big and fancy new computer, but I don’t need one. My computer is working just fine and does what I ask it to do. It has been doing so for close to ten years now and as long as it does my simple chores I will not tinker with my financial status quo.

I don’t need a pile of new clothes from Amazon or L.L. Bean. My wardrobe is comfortably broken in. Hawaiian Shirts in Summer and Sweatshirts in the rest of the year. Pants is Pants.

I buy new boots when the ones I have on start to lean to one side even when I’m not wearing them. I can wear out boots in about six months. With the online bargains on boots I can still get them cheaper at Wal-Mart. Size 10 ½ Wide. I have to get Wide because I have feet like a duck – broad in the front and narrow at the back. The 10 ½ fits my right foot. My left foot is about three sizes smaller so it doesn’t matter what I buy for that side of my body.

If I do buy anything during this Pre-Thanksgiving Christmas Bargain Mania it might be a small, easy to carry, thermonuclear heating unit that I can wrap around my shoulders to keep me warm. I’ve done some preliminary scanning on Amazon and I don’t see where they have anything like that on the shelf and ready to ship to me in one to three days via FedEx. I’m disappointed – not surprised, just disappointed. Why can I log onto the Amazon website and order up some boxing gloves for chickens, but not a compact heating unit with a half-life of ten thousand years? It kind of makes me lose faith in Amazon and Jeff Bezos. I can just imagine what it’s doing to those chickens.

So there it all stands. We are leaving the Irish Island behind and returning head first into a world where every other vehicle on the road is delivering goods and goodies ordered by someone who wants, but probably doesn’t need, any of it. I’m half of that – I don’t need, but I also don’t want. I don’t want to come home and find a pile of boxes on the front porch. I don’t want to open a 16” X 20” carton to retrieve something that could have been shipped in a 3” X 5” envelope. I don’t want to have to dispose of all those boxes, filling up our recycling bin, when we need that empty space for all of the empty Dr. Pepper cans we generate.

What I want is my Thermonuclear Heated Shirt.

You can keep the boxing gloves. The chickens will thank you.

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