Shopping.  It’s got to be my least favorite activity.  I’m not even very happy about buying things, although it sure beats shopping.  What’s the difference you ask?  Well, shopping is the process of looking around in stores in preparation for actually buying something.  Buying, on the other hand, is the process of entering a store, choosing something and buying it.

Now, I’ll admit that shopping does have some advantages over buying.  If you’ve done enough shopping, when you are ready to buy something you probably know where to go to get the best price and selection.  With buying, you pretty much enter the store, find something that at least vaguely resembles the item you need, and head for the cash register.

I do enjoy shopping for things like gifts, for example, because you want to be sure to get just the right thing.  And, I much prefer shopping for things I don’t have to try on.  Trying on clothes is one of the most irritating things I’m forced to do.  And, I blame the clothes manufacturers.

For example, did you know that there is a group of designers who decide what colors are going to be used each season?  Well, there is.  So that means that if you want a red sweater and red isn’t “in”, you’ll have to wait until next year – or maybe the year after that.  By that time, of course, you’ve forgotten you wanted one.

The other thing that drives me nuts are clothes sizes.  Put all the manufacturers together, and they’d look a lot like the blind men trying to describe the elephant.  You remember that one, right?  The blind man at the head of the elephant described it as a long, flexible tube-like creature.  While the blind man at the opposite end of the elephant swore it was a long scaly animal that swished back and forth a lot, and so on.

With clothes manufacturers, they each have a different way of describing women.  I swear you can find clothes with the same dimensions that are sized as 6, 8, and 10 by different manufacturers.  Therefore, you might have to try on three sizes of the same item to make one purchase.  Ridiculous!

This topic came to mind because I just discovered a fantastic way to shop, invented by Jamie Curtis.  When asked about a jacket she was wearing, she described how she came to own it.  It’s called Drive-By Shopping.  She was driving by a clothing store, spotted the jacket, called the store on her cell, asked if they had the jacket in a medium, gave them her credit card number and they met her at the door with her purchase.

Wow!  Awesome!!  Maybe I’ll invent a clothing store with a drive-up window.  Might be a hit.