no stores paid me to advertise for them

I am not a shopper. Just ask my friends who see me in the same clothes and the same shoes and the same earrings time after time after time, well more like year after year after year.

But old dogs can learn new tricks.

Right after I issued the call for orphanage Christmas gift donations, I was pleasantly slammed with not only envelopes containing checks but also phone calls about great deals at certain stores in town. I was amazed at the level of generosity. A dentist emailed immediately to say that he would provide 180 toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste for the kids. A Hallmark associate offered to underwrite a shopping spree at the employee Hallmark Double Discount Store. A friend showed up on my doorstep with bars of soap.

But my ole pal Sandy is the one who really got my shopping juices simmering. She called one morning so excited that I thought maybe she’d just found a vintage Edward Weston print for five bucks at a garage sale. What had gotten her heart pumping were boxes of crayons - one penny each at Office Max. The catch was that each customer was limited to three boxes, so could Eddie and I come down and get all our friends to come down so that we could deplete the store’s stock of crayolas.

Which we did.

Later that same day, not having had much of a chance to recover from her earlier find, Sandy called to say that Walgreens was selling flip-flops for a buck apiece. She was walking and could only manage one big shopping bag, so Eddie and I had better get in the car and head on over there to clear the racks.

Which we did. And then we even went to two other locations to clear their racks, too.




Yesterday, ON MY OWN, I discovered the joy of Target. Seventy-five striped and polka dotted girl’s shirts soon filled the back seat of my car. I kind of even got that shopper’s high I’ve heard people talk about. I know this because I threw a box of Junior Mints on the conveyer belt just as the check out girl was ringing up the last shirt, and I usually reserve those for road trips or special occasions.

There was enough Christmas gift money donated for me to spend $7 per child. My calculator has been working overtime, and I have discovered that I can put together quite the nice package with that amount. This will require much more shopping, and I’m actually looking forward to it.

Walmart, look out!