An Ode To Target (Oh Brother, Can You Spare A Five-And-Dime?)

Truth be told, I’m not into shopping. Those more “domesticated” than myself might look at this American consumer spectacle as an Olympic right of passage into adulthood, to be sure. To me, though, it’s just another zombie freestyle event right out of a George A. Romero movie, complete with headset cell phones created by yuppies that feed on our battered and bruised brains - and the only one who seems to be screaming in the audience is me.

Go figure.It is a “Blue Light Special of The Living Dead” to say the least, but for this former youth, anyway, once weaned on Woolworth’s, Space Invaders, comic books, Wacky Packages, and other assorted cosmic flavors of ICEE and cotton candy - I’m just not biting.When any member of the fairer sex drags me out for a day of competitive price-gouging at the local shopping complex, I always seem to shrug with a most simplistic form of enthusiasm usually reserved for Republican roundtables or focus groups revolving around the latest and greatest groundbreaking improvements in laundry detergent, fabric softeners, and other such futile flights of fancy.There is one sole exception. There is one such miraculous monument to modern monetary marvels and spending with such mindless, reckless abandon that I simply cannot resist: Her siren song of fiscal depravity. She is the Lady Liberty of inexpensive bed linens and throwback Atari games alike – and her name, my friends, is Target.Target is the futuristic symbol of simpler days now gone by the wayside. It’s the big box store with the red and white bulls eye and the Spuds MacKenzie dog who teaches us all it’s okay to bleed red, white, and blue credit card debt until we ultimately die, gasping in quiet desperation for one last cash advance before we head into the proverbial Poltergeist light (or bankruptcy court, whichever comes first).Target, in the end, is just Wal-Mart - for more upscale hillbillies.On any given Sunday, it never seems to fail: My girlfriend or mother (and, really, are they both not interchangeable?) will always find a way to drag me off on some damn fool crusade of consumerism. Even though a local Target store is a stone’s throw away from us in any given direction, it will undoubtedly take us two or more hours to get there by car, after getting stuck driving behind “Ma and Pa Kettle” out on their scenic, weekend drive.Once you arrive at your doomed-from-the-beginning destination, that’s when the Wonka-like magic and wonderment truly begins for any and all advanced adolescents trapped in a tragic time warp. It is the discount dance of the dead.Forget about grabbing one of those wobbly plastic shopping carts soaked with neon-red blood from fatalities along the consumer highway. There is simply not enough time to dawdle! I intend to grasp as many throwaway goods that will initially make me feel okay about myself for about 2.4 nanoseconds, like some spastic game show contestant on a secluded cable station, in a galaxy far, far away.Gone are the food court pretzels and other assorted snacks that taste like prison food (or worse, Applebee’s). Well sure, cost-cutting culinary delights might still be there, but with the adjusted rate of inflation, these salty snacks of Satan are surely not worth purchasing unless you are willing to default on a mortgage loan (or three) in the meantime.Moving right along, like a septic shopper flowing with the ebb and tide of a mighty materialistic river, my current mission keeps me searching for those comics of my youth on the revolving metal stand in the center aisle. The Brave and The Bold always featured Batman and some super guest star to foil any manic madman of his day. Sadly, all I find this time on the rack is a Harvey Pekar graphic novel teamed-up with some oh-so-trendy idealist suffering from Epstein-Barr syndrome (sigh). Where’s the justice?That’s neither here nor there.

Article Author: Chris McVetta

Chris McVetta is a graduate of Cleveland State University and an alumni of The Second City creative writing program.

Chris has published hundreds of articles on pop culture, sports, film, TV and comedy in such venues as The Cleveland …

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