GETTING CONNECTED TO CHRISTMAS SHOPPING ON-LINE

I’m ahead on my Christmas shopping this year. I’ve actually bought 3 presents already. I’m a notorious and tortured last minute shopper. Then I heard about online shopping, so I called my friend Susan to see what that’s about.


“Hi Susan! I’m doing pretty good so far this Christmas. “
“How do you figure Steve?”
“Well, I already bought some presents, and I haven’t told anybody “Christmas can blow me” yet”
“That’s very good for you Steve”
“Susan, do you ever shop online?”
“Sure , all the time. I’m doing it right now.”
“Well, what’s that like?”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you do it?”

There kind of a pause, and I can hear the wheels turning in Susan’s mind over the phone.

“Do you have any idea what you are looking for?” she asks.
“No.”
“Then online shopping probably isn’t for you.”
“But Susan, I hear so much good stuff about it. Maybe I could learn.”
Again, a pause.
‘Well, tell me how you usually Christmas shop”

“How do I usually Christmas shop? Well, usually about December 23rd, when there is no moon, I go to Walmart, and wander lonely haggard through the aisles; I search and search, and find nothing. I find nothing, because mine is not a shopping trip, it is a confession. It is like sitting in a darkened booth adjacent to a priest, surrounded by lights and trees and fake snow; amidst beautiful ornaments and twinkle-lites and glitter; there is wrapping paper with happy little snowmen that I can’t afford (I suck at wrapping anyway) and smiling faces everywhere that puzzle me; it is a money shuffle where the plastic reindeer are marked down at midnight and everyone not smiling is in a hurry, in a hurry to a confession of their own, and my confession is that I do not know how to act around all this gaiety, all this capitalism, all this tinsel.
So I'm sad, very sad, and come Christmas Day I just want to scream like I'm at Gitmo.
 When I break it down, I don't even know who I need to buy for and I wouldn't have a clue what to get them if I did. Its the most confusing time of the year”

Again a silence, a longer silence then Susan softly asks:
“Steve, what happened to you to make you feel this way about Christmas?”
“Oh, that’s easy. A long time ago, someone told me not to get them anything for Christmas. So I made a bad mistake, and didn’t. ”