The Chronic Consumer

When I was a kid, my family used to shop at Kmart all the time. Back then, Kmart and a place called Venture were the only discount stores in the Chicago area, since neither Target nor Wal-Mart were around yet.

I absolutely hated going to those stores because I was always worried that my friends from school would see me shopping there and would make fun of me. Never mind that if they saw me there it would mean that they were shopping at the “generic store” as well; my 10-year-old mind didn’t work that way. So I would spend the entire time scanning all the other customers to make sure that I didn’t run into anyone I knew.

The worst part about these shopping excursions had to be when we went to Kmart and it was time for one of their Blue Light Specials. An announcement would blare over the loudspeakers, “Attention, Kmart shoppers…” and then one of those infamous blue emergency lights would start whirling and flashing to signal a special discount. My mom would always race around to try to get to the discounted item and check it out before other shoppers snapped it up, which was enough to make me want to crawl into a hole and never come out.

Of course now that I’m older and have a child of my own, I fully understand the reason for shopping at discount stores. I admit I was a brat when I was a kid; thank goodness my boy isn’t the same way!