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The his and hers of shopping
Whenever the wife says we need to go to the shops, I immediately ask: "What are we going for?" If the answer is either "clothes" or "shoes", I run away screaming and am not seen again for days.
- By Gautam Raja, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:00 January 30, 2007
- Image Credit: Illustration by Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
Whenever the wife says we need to go to the shops, I immediately ask: "What are we going for?" If the answer is either "clothes" or "shoes", I run away screaming and am not seen again for days.
This turns completely on its head when it's my turn to go shopping and the answer to her hasty query is either "music" or "kitchen supplies".
Then she bolts, because this time I'm the one wandering through aisles for hours, fingering things I couldn't possibly need or want, such as the latest J-Lo album or a restaurant-quality stand-mixer that can make 3 tonnes of dough at one go.
Sometimes, we're able to make deals. Our local mall, for example, lets her initiate happy marital give-and-takes such as: "While I go look at clothes for untold hours in Papaya, you can turn your ears numb at the listening stations in Virgin."
We fix a time and meet peaceably after, shopped out and ready for dinner. This has worked so well, that on a recent trip I generously unleashed her on a Marks and Sparks, even though I had nowhere to run.
With deep misgivings, I joined two beaten looking men on the sofas in the shoe section and we sat there for the next several days, gently starving and getting in the way of women wanting to sit and try potential purchases.
"Never again," I thought. However, once back home from the holiday, we started shopping around for a car and to my dismay, it's going the same way as the clothing quests. One moment we're desperately trying to see if we can afford a new MINI Cooper S; the next we're "settling" for a Mazda 3; and the next we're contemplating a $3,000 Nissan 300ZX that has, in its 12 years of service, gone six times around the earth at the equator.
I gently suggest that the death rattle of a 3.0L V6 engine will probably be the loudest sound in our lives, but before I've finished speaking, we've moved on.
Suddenly we're looking at some other misshapen Japanese sports car from the early 90s, forgotten by all but a bunch of manic enthusiasts who sell their blood for replacement crankshafts and valve springs.
This time I stay quiet, and sure enough, we're soon back to valiantly failing to lever our lack of credit history into the miniscule boot of a MINI - with or without bonnet stripes.
Every so often, just to hear the grinding clash of a spanner in the works, I throw in my oh-so-Cali idea of buying the 1972 convertible Beetle going on Cars.com for a song. (No doubt, a folksy peace anthem.)
Today, I've been left with instructions to do follow-up research, but I have no idea where our circular quest stopped.
I'm not sure whether I should be checking interest rates on new-car loans we can't pay or our legal rights if our supercharged, superannuated sports car blows up on its way home from the shop.
We don't seem to be interested in anything in between. Sometimes though, in a moment of despair the manifesto becomes: "Let's buy a rundown runabout and run it into the ground", but there's something terribly depressing about a 12-year-old Nissan Sunny. And so, even as we admit $4,000 is all we can afford, we're back to looking at the $23,000 MINI Cooper S.
The solution is probably to do as we would at the mall - split up and meet again when the job's done. That's why I'm seriously contemplating leaving her at the computer and going out and buying myself a bicycle.
Gautam Raja is a journalist based in California.
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