Walking the Earth at Fry’s

Posted on April 5, 2007 in Consuming Mania

Because I was desperate to be out of the house looking at things, we went to [[Fry’s Electronics]] in Fountain Valley. Years ago, I’d gone to the original which was housed in a glass supermarket turned techno-paradise in an [[industrial park]] off Lawrence Expressway in Sunnyvale. I’d followed every move that little store made and helped make the Palo Alto Store a commercial success with my manic cravings for software and unusual bits of hardware. It was at Fry’s that I bought my first thirty megabyte hard drive (“oh, don’t worry, Mister Sax. You’ll never fill it up!) and augmented my heavilly kludged IBM XP with many wonders. We ran that devil into the ground using peripherals we bought at Fry’s. When friends visited me from Slovenia, they wanted to go to Fry’s. The store was a legend even over there.

Tonight, I felt none of the hunger. I had a fair amount of spare cash ever since I stabilized on my meds and stopped eating out so often. So I wandered up and down the aisles, trying to decide between a shortwave radio, a new digital camera to replace the one that was cracked during my misadventure on the Silverado Motorway a few years back, or an iPod to rival the one Lynn owns. The aisles were stacked with electromaniac paraphenalia and I did not feel so much as a twitch for any of it, not even the expensive Pentax and Olympus digitals. When Lynn said that she was getting tired, I didn’t object. We fiddled with an electric guitar gizmo and a keyboard, then went home.

I’ve lost the delight that goes with compulsive shopping. The items stayed on their shelves and the cash stayed in my wallet. The lights of the city going home didn’t glow and tickle my retinas. I didn’t feel depressed. I felt homely and normal.

I told Lynn “The only thing I want to do is read other people’s writing.” She said “So what’s wrong with that?” What’s wrong with walking the earth when you have flown with the angels?

[tags]Southern California, Fry’s Electronics, shopping, conspicuous consumption[/tags]