i spend an inordinate amount of time
looking through coupons to determine what to buy and how much i can save,
but what i’m saving for,
i honestly could not tell you,
cause it’s not like these coupons amount to much
2am.
I don’t trust the time. I don’t trust anything that tells me who and what I am at any particular juncture in my life.
The strobe lights of consumerism whiz through the room. I scroll through Amazon. Window shopping, of a sorts. I’ve been at this since 8pm the previous night.
In 2 hours I will need to be at work. I work as a welder for a steel company that employs almost a third of this town. This godforesaken town. Nah, it’s not that bad.
I honestly have no idea why I constantly scroll and scour the internet, especially Amazon. Mostly Amazon. I spend about 5hrs on average per day looking at a wide-range of products on Amazon that I have no intention of buying. It’s not that I couldn’t afford them. I have a fairly decent-paying, union job and no dependents in my mid-20’s. I’m certain I’m the ideal demographic for most retail companies wanting to peddle their crap to some unsuspecting turd.
I might just be that turd.
But I end up never buying anything. I guess I like the idea of buying crap more than actually dealing with that crap. It’s more romantic that way. Scrolling through Amazon, imagining what my life would look like if I had an Oklahoma Joe meat cleaver with accompanying holster. Maybe I could be a butcher. Perhaps I could be the type of guy that would grill out every weekend and make my friends and neighbors green with envy from the rich aromas billowing from my backyard’s grill. Which of course would also mean that I would need a grillin’ apron that had some clever catchphrase printed on the front, like The Grillfather, or Chillin’ to be Grillin’, or Grillin’ Singer, or How’s it Cookin’, Good Lookin’. I don’t know what apron I would actually buy. I’ve envisioned myself with almost over 300 different grill aprons, and I still honestly couldn’t say which one looked better on me in my mind.
A jolting buzz rings across the room. My phone’s alarm notifies me that I need to be up, to be alive, so I can go to work. I briefly contemplate calling out so I can scroll through Amazon some more, but quickly scrap the idea because if I didn’t have any income then I wouldn’t be able to imagine my life better with all the stuff on Amazon.
Fred Aiken Writing 