No Thank You

I was meandering around the men's clothing department at a popular mall-store while my wife was engaging in a more serious shopping mind-set several aisles away. I noticed a circular-carrasole clothing display with a large '75% Off Sale' sign. I thought, this might be my day. As I began perusing the items, I suddenly realized that I was a stranger in an unfamiliar place.

There was a T-shirt tagged at $12.99, a polo style collar shirt for $59.99 and a long sleeved casual shirt for $79.99. Folks, T-shirts with nonsensical prints on the front were originally priced at $48 bucks? A polo shirt originally priced at $150 and a long sleeve shirt was once nearly two hundred dollars? PLEASE!!! When in the name of sanity did we run this thing off the tracks? This is crazy!
Dress Shoes in this store were priced between $155 and $240.

My wife volunteers working at our Church's Economy Shop where donated clothing is reasonably priced for the consumer. This Economy Shop is a mission project outreach for those who cannot afford many of today's retail clothing prices. Tell you what, next time I take her to work, I'm going inside!

About two weeks after that no-purchase mall experience, I was watching a segment of The Today Show where people were asked to select the best tasting coffee. Of course, one coffee brand was very pricey while the second brand was a cheaper fast food product. Most coffee connoisseurs will agree that coffee taste is determined by the quality of the coffee beans. Therefore the results? 67% of the people selected the cheaper brand as better tasting. Go figure!

Well, here's how I figure. We weak minded consumers are motivated by advertising, designer products and the motivation to 'Keep up with the Joneses.'

This stuff makes no sense to me. Understand, I began driving my family's 1950 Bel Aire Chevy when I turned 16 in the year 1955. Gas was .23 per gallon, a movie ticket was .50 and my date and I could each have a hamburger, fries and malt for less than two dollars. I gonna need a helluva alot more memory loss before I pay today's retail clothing prices.