This week I shopped for three must-haves: a car, a computer, and a pair of sneakers.
Researching a new car was simple. A few websites have determined that the number of doors and the color are all one needs to take an educated stab at buying the second most expensive possession in anyone’s life. Budget is a distant third. I punched in my responses and out popped a few cars. I weeded out those that failed to meet my request that the passenger seat must be endowed with the same fancy adjustments as the driver’s, from lumbar support to climate control. After all, when my husband drives me around, I am relegated to the passenger seat. But it’s my car, where I should not be considered a second-class citizen.
Only two cars fit my criterion. At the first showroom, I sniffed the inside of the car for that delicious leather aroma, took out the car for a spin, signed a few papers, and became the official owner.
Finding a notebook computer was a more demanding task, requiring me to master new terminology such as RAM and Megahertz, and understand what the number of pixels on my screen meant. I got the hang of it as I perused through several catalogues and sorted the models that matched my budget. Then I called some online companies and got my deal—sight unseen, a free case included. The computer arrived in a box the next afternoon.
Buying sneakers, though, demoted me to the class of dimwits. “Do you cross-train?” the salesman standing in front of a wall of sneakers asked me, and in the same breath produced a shoe whose top was crisscrossed by a straining pink mesh that reminded me of my late grandmother’s corset.
Cross-train. I mulled over the new term until I remembered someone at the gym where I take Pilates (barefoot) mentioning a cross-training machine. “No,” I shook my head. “But I’m size eight, medium.” Surely, he’d appreciate an easy-to-fit customer.
Unimpressed by my helpfulness, he pulled down another pair. “Do you need the sneakers for jogging? Walking on the treadmill?” He pointed at an air-bubble, like that in a plumb-ruler, set in the back of the heel.
