Choices

All this talk about blue jeans and such got me to thinking about how different times are now. Remember when we were younger (and not that much younger) you only had one, maybe two, kinds of jeans to choose from? Everyone fixed up their own to make them different.

Of course, by the time I was a teenager the powers that be in the clothing industry had already figured out they needed to branch out because we were all hungry to "be different" by looking different. Except we still managed to look like everyone else! We all wore bell bottoms or hip huggers or whatever the flavor of the moment might be. All we did was label ourselves as either geeks, nerds, cool or jocks or whatever group we "fit" into.

Keds were about it if you wanted tennis shoes if I remember rightly. When jogging became the rage then pretty quick there started to be more tennis shoes on the racks. Now they come out with new tennis shoe styles every year and they retire the old ones. It always amazes me when I go to buy tennis shoes and I get last years on sale because they're not making them anymore.

I can't seem to get all excited about tennis shoes unless they're on a little child's foot and they light up or roll. That's cute. Grown-up tennis shoes just need to be comfortable and give the right support. I can't see what all the fuss is about.

Have you seen the prices they put on some of those "in" tennis shoes? Especially on kids tennis shoes. Those kids are going to outgrow those things in a month and yet they spend more on one pair than they do on food in some cases. And what about the crimes they commit to steal someone's shoes off their feet?

We sure are a material people anymore, or at least some are. Did you gals study Maslow's hierarchy of needs? I think we've managed to invert his pyramid!

I do have a tendency to just skitter all over the place when I'm writing don't I?

I don't know if having all these choices is really a good thing. How many kinds of water do we really need? How long does it need to take to pick out a stick of butter or margarine? Imagine when we were growing up seeing a whole aisle of nothing but choices of toilet paper (I promise, I'm not getting back on a toilet paper theme again)? What about milk? It comes out of cow and goes into a carton. Why does one brand cost so much more than they other? And laundry soap! My goodness there are more choices and all we're doing is washing clothes.

How many of your choices are the ones your mama made when you were growing up? We always used Tide to wash clothes but now I use that baking soda brand. I used Kleenex forever because that's what my mama used, but now I've switched to those Puff's because they have lotion in them. I don't think I'm real stuck on one brand or another but boy my husband sure is! There's only one kind of mayonaise as far as he's concerned, ditto on toilet paper (oops, wasn't going to mention it again but I did).

Ah well, there are now whole degrees in college on how to get people hooked on products. Do you know that there are people who study how we shop and design stores to entice you to grab things? I don't know whether it's a good thing or not, but it sure does give a lot of people a job to do so I guess I can't grumble about it.

Well, I'm going to go into the kitchen and see what I feel like making for dinner. I have a lot of choices in there, thank goodness!!!

Miss Faye