Bargains

After our celebration over my first presentation to a college class of students who were assigned and read my book, my mother had errands. Of course I was the designated runner and the first stop was Target.

“What do you need, dare I ask?”

“Just some Swiffer stuff.”

When we got to the Swiffer aisle, Mom picked up boxes of Swiffer fillers. She put on her glasses to read the boxes with calculated precision, the way a scientist might examine mitochondria on a slide. Then came the mumbling.

“Oh, uh hunh I don't want to pay this, $8.99, that's crazy, don't they have anything less expensive than that...maybe this box...you know I can go price check it...”

I was impressed to see that she knew not only where the price checker was, but how to scan with it as well. Impressed, and a tad bothered. Disposable time and shopping tolerance had finally met in this 62-year-old's consciousness. She's at that age where winning means she saved fifty cents. The next stage is when winning means she's saved fifty cents on something that she doesn't need. And please know that she demonstrated a better working understanding of this machine than Christine O'Donnell has of the Constitution (not that this is saying much).

“...Oh this IS $8.99. I'm not paying that...ooh, look the $11.49 is a better value, right?”

“Yes,” I confessed. “Are you turning into Grandy?”

“Hmph.”

Not as complete denial. When my mother's mother was only a few years older, she made a habit of going out of her way to find the deal.

When we finished sorting out the Swiffer items, we moseyed to the other side of Target where we could look to see if they have movies worth buying, movie Mom hasn't seen and that can be enjoyed at home.

“You know I stopped renting movies because they're all widescreen.”

“What's wrong with widescreen?”

“I don't like seeing that extra six inches of space on the top and bottom of the screen because that's just a waste of screen space,” she said.

I explained to her that the picture on full screen settings is truncated on the sides in order to fill the screen the way she likes to see it. But she was ahead of me.

"Well maybe you can look at the DVD player and figure out a way to set it differently."

I looked at the two vids I had in my hand and could find a full screen option nowhere on them. I confessed that I hadn't seen many new DVDs with a full screen option.

“I guess I won't be watching any new DVD's then.”

I could only muster a long sigh as the bubbly cashier collected my money for the videos I'd purchased.

“Yeah it sort of sucks," she said, "that they've stopped making DVD's with full screen because they want everybody to buy new televisions."

“I shouldn't have to buy a new television," my mother said.

"You shouldn't," the woman said. Then she changed the mood. “That will be $22.14."

“What??!” Mom was aghast. She looked at the woman as if she'd asked Mom to pay her mortgage in full.

“That makes sense,” I told her. “Only one of those items was a deal, remember?”

“Oh, well that's awful,” Mom said. She stopped and thought, as if taking the time might alter the price of the two items she wanted to purchase. Just when I was about to be embarrassed that we were holding up the line, Mom dug into her purse and grabbed a stack of coupons.

Before I could get cozy in my horror at this, Mom proceeded to hand the stack of coupons to the young woman behind the register.

“Could you go through these and see if any of them work for this stuff, hon?” she said.

Now I was astonished. Who was this woman inhabiting my mother's body? And where was my credit card so that I could eliminate this nonsense right away? Matter of fact, why didn't I just go ahead (against my mother's wishes) and ask the cashier to scan her Swiffer stuff with the two DVD's I bought that Mom probably won't watch...

“I'm sorry,” the cashier said with genuine regret.

“Oh, don't worry about it,” my mother said.

She then pulled out a crisp hundred.

“Really? REALLY??”

She knew she was wrong. She understands why. She has something like three degrees and loads of common sense. She just finished helping me clean up my lecture on a book I wrote. She gets dramatic irony.

“Well, every little bit counts,” the cashier said.

“That's right girl.”

Course she says this. She did not have to spent forty minutes with her mother on two cleaning items at Target that she could not get a deal on. I don't know that. Maybe she did. Maybe all children go through this with their mothers. And if I were to suddenly make zillions of dollars to support her shopping, even gave her a budget, she might still scan items at the price-checker...

She is now ebullient about the 140-point play she just made on Scrabble against the computer. “Yes! 140 points for the word “coasting” which does exactly that across two triple-letter tiles...”