ange the raging shopaholic

I’ve often insisted to others, especially to my mom, that I am not, in fact, a fanatic impulse shopper. Yet as I look back I realized that in the past year I have not gone more than a month without purchasing some sort of article of clothing or useless item. The unopened car air freshener sitting in some forgotten corner of my room, the never-worn pair of corduroys hanging in my closet and the used one-time hair straightening iron from Wal-Mart (remember what I said about Wal-Mart?), purchased a year ago are a testament to my folly.

After all, I do exhibit the signs of perhaps what most would deem a shopaholic: 1) occasionally skipping work early to go the mall and “look around” (perhaps the fact that I am merely bored and have no work to do might have something to do with it, but I digress); 2) being unable to resist a sale; 3) convincing myself that I absolutely need something, such as a fourth pair of jeans; 4) furtively spiriting my new purchases away into my room in a guilt-ridden manner to hide it from my mom, and during the summer, from my roommate.

The first towards solving the problem is recognizing it. And the recognition came slamming down on my head like a ton of bricks a few days ago on a shopping trip with Sana. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you hear yourself saying things like “Well, you can never have too many pairs of underwear, right?”

Sana and I spent that afternoon perusing a variety of stores and exhibiting warning signs of pseudo-shopper-schizophrenia. “What do you think of these boots?” she asked when we were at Aldo, holding out a brown pair with pointy-toes, all the rage these days. “I don’t really need a pair of boots, though, but…”

“They’re nice!” I said excitedly. “Try them on!”

Of course, pointy-toes high heel boots are not the most practical, especially if you’re an elementary school teacher. But Sana seemed torn, because they did look very nice when she tried them, and especially since they were 30% off.

“But they’re brown” she sighed, “and brown’s such a hard color to match. What do you think?”

“They’re on sale and it’s such a good deal!” I insisted. “You should just get them because it’s all always good to a nice dressy pair of boots.” I paused, and continued, “But I think that if you don’t absolutely love them and you don’t really need them, then don’t get them.” I looked at the boots again. “Hey, maybe I should get them!”

Seeing the confused look on Sana’s face resulting from the several conflicting statements that I had just offered her, I quickly turned away and stared intently at a pair of sandals on the shelf in front of me.

Note: I don’t need another pair of boots, nor did I absolutely fall in love with the ones she was trying.

An hour later, we found ourselves at Zara, a store where the salespeople are infamous for seldomly acknowledging the presence of their clientele. With the sheer volume of Saturday shoppers filling the place, we were sure that we would be more than just ignored – we would probably be refused change rooms altogether. Undaunted, we made our way inside anyway.
“Hey, what do you think of these pants?” I asked Sana, picking up a pair from a nearby rack.
“They’re nice,” she replied as she scrutinized them and then scanned the rest of its offerings. “Uh, don’t you have a pair of beige pants already?” she added casually.
“Nope!” I answered, a little too brightly.
She turned slightly and looked me right in the eyes. “Are you lying?”
“Um…” I paused slightly, averted her eyes, and then sighed. “Yes,” I said, in a small voice, feeling slightly ashamed. She just laughed at me.

We spent another two hours of see-sawing between being convinced that we absolutely needed certain articles of clothing and accessories and then snapping back into realistic practicality. When I started telling Sana how much I needed this 90 dollar skirt, she practically took me by the arm and dragged me out of the store. Not to say that we didn’t end up purchasing anything though – at the end of the shopping day we were both toting shopping bags filled with things that we talked ourselves into plunking down our hard-earned cash for. Although I was reveling in a guilty pleasure, I was at the same time aghast at how only hours earlier I had decided that I didn't need anymore clothes. Yet here I was, trying to figure out how I was supposed to cram these newly acquired fall wardrobe additions into my closet.

On our way back to the parking lot, we passed by Indigo, which apparently closed later in the day, evidenced by the number of readers and shoppers milling about in the store. I poked Sana in the arm. “Look at all those people in line!” I said excitedly. “Do you think they’re having a sale?”

Sana looked through the window thoughtfully. “Maybe,” she answered slowly and then almost instantaneously her voice took on another quality. “Let’s go inside and see!”

And, without another moment’s hesitation, we were inside the store, being jostled about here and there by other people: some who were there to search for the newest New York Times bestseller; others who didn’t know where else to turn after all the other stores closed; and people who fell in somewhere in between, such as Sana and I, drawn immediately to the “$10 and under!” table.

I actually don’t need to feign interest in the literary pursuits because I do enjoy reading. So it was genuine interest that I browsed their discounted selection, picking up various novels that I had never heard of by authors I do not know, and thumbing through the pages. Whether these novels were good or not were of little consequence to me – their deeply reduced prices alone would merit ringing them up at the cash.
“Can you believe they’re selling “[name of novel I don’t remember]” for only 4 dollars?” said a middle-aged woman incredulously, standing near us to her friend, gesturing at one of the titles sitting in the pile. Wordlessly, Sana and I both immediately picked up that very same book and started leafing through it.

“I can’t believe how cheap these books are!” I hissed to Sana under my breath. “Maybe I should get one!”

“And they’re hardcover too!” she whispered back. “It would be wrong NOT to buy it!”

I circled the table and started looking the books with the most impressive covers – and subsequently blowing off that immortal phrase “Never judge a book by its cover” when Sana came up beside me. “We must leave now,” she said quietly. “We must leave now!” The spell that the bargain books had put over me broke, and I put the book I was holding back down and allowed myself to be steered out of the store.

An intervention at Indigo, by another shopaholic. If that’s not the warning of a problem like emergency road flares at night, I don’t know what is.