Everyone Is Entitled To My Opinion- On Shopping
Dear Friends,
Do you enjoy shopping? When did you first start shopping? Perhaps as a youngster you went to the Five and Dime to buy caps for your cap gun, maybe you had saved or earned enough for a rubber knife with a sheath, did you go to the drug store (today the Pharmacy) for penny candy and comic books. As you became a teenager did you have a job and step your shopping up a bit; a box of candy or flowers for Mother’s Day, Greeting cards for birthdays or holiday’s, perhaps you were buying some of your own clothes, shoes, or books. Now, do you have a family and shopping has become a planned trip, perhaps with a list in hand for food, clothes, home repair, office supplies, or a trip to the State Store and a quick stop at WaWa? What time of the day do you go? Do you visit several stores to complete your shopping outing? Do you go alone or with your children in tow or maybe a friend, car pool and have lunch together? Do you clip coupons, check prices on line and plan meals for the week.
Yes shopping has become a very social event, how often do you meet or just run into a friend while shopping, the Super Market now carries beer and wine, you can sit and have a meal and a drink date or just a spur of the moment snack. We are indeed social people who enjoy spending some friendly moments. Suddenly what has happened? Organized looting, smash and grabs and not just a couple of individuals shop lifting, the other day the news reported, complete with video, a hundred screaming, laughing, violent people smashing cases, windows, assaulting customers and employees as they ran out of the store with their arms full of merchandise.
How is it that we have allowed this type of thing to escalate to this level? Leave the store with hundreds of dollars of merchandise and security gets fired for trying to bring you back, better yet riot in the streets and break into many stores, loot and burn, and if the owners decide to arm and defend themselves and their life’s work they can end up in jail. Have you heard “Just stand back and let them take what they want, they obviously need it more than you.” If this was at all true these villains would get a job, cut coupons, plan their spending and buy what they need. Maybe the bully needed your milk money more than you did. Did you stand up to him and defend your nickel, do you ever think that you may have changed his life for the better, it seems that getting away with such unwarranted behavior only allows it to escalate. While law makers and politicians ponder the solution and the police watch those they charge walk free, what do we do? What can we do? Worry if our youngsters want to stop and buy candy, our teens shop for and go on their dates, our young newlyweds shop as they start their families? Make phone calls, write letters ask questions, attend town meetings, and when you vote, know who and what you are voting for. Well enough for now I need to order some socks on line before our pizza is delivered for dinner.