Turn on the blue light for the holidays

The other night while grocery shopping, my wife said to me, "Your mom stopped by the WalMart on our side of town to pickup a DVD that was on sale." I explained that driving across town for a sale item was normal behavior for my mom, in stark contrast to my wife who wouldn't drive across the street to save $4 if she was already at a store that had what she wanted.

And thus were laid the foundations of our discussion regarding my mom's perspective on consumerism. Now I don't want to say that my mom is cheap, because that wouldn't necessarily be accurate. It's more that she's, shall we say, bargain obsessive.

You see, I believe I grew up with an uncommon perspective on the way people shop for groceries, home goods, gasoline, haircuts, etc. It is simply not in my mom's ability to make a purchase at a given price at a given store if she knew that the same item (not necessarily the same brand, size, or quality...hence my diet of generic canned goods) could be purchased within approximately 35 miles for a lower price.

Now the obvious hole in this logic involves the value of one's time and/or the value of the wear and tear (and gasoline, strangely) used by the vehicle in chase of such bargains. It was common knowledge in our house growing up that in the grand scheme of the shopping universe, my mom's time was a "buy one get one free." Therefore her willingness to stop at three grocery stores on the way home from work (one for milk, another for bread, and a third for a $0.25 off deal on Kleenex) was understandable. While I appreciate the zeal behind such a quest, I'd sooner buy all my groceries at the local Quickie Mart than go through such a hunt on my own.

As a child, I developed a vocabulary not common in a five year old. I understood the "buy one get one free." I could distinguish between a 12 oz box and a 16 oz box. I was the only kid to graduate from Glenns Valley Elementary who knew what a "rain check" was.

I mentioned to my wife that I grew up with other quirks of my mom's "system" as well. For example, I can remember standing in line #2 at the local grocery store with two pounds of bacon and a $5 bill in hand. I could look down the store, if I stood on my tippie toes, and see mom in line #5 (the rule is there must be at least two lines in between). The exchange at the register was always the same:

"Hey there big fella. Just getting the bacon today?"
"Yep."
"Sure you don't need a Zagnut or some Vics Vaporub while you're here?"
"No, ma'am, just the bacon thanks."
"I see you got two pounds -- the limit per customer. That's a heck of a deal."
"Sure is. I do like my bacon."

At this point, the cashier would turn from 5 year old me and have a look down at mom, also carrying her two pounds. I was never prevented from completing the purchase, but every store in town was onto the jig.

My mom had a good working relationship with all of the clerks at the various clothing stores in our local mall as well. My mom goes to the mall at some point during each and every week, and usually she returns home with at least one item -- a new pair of pants, a sweater, etc. Yet you will only see my mom in a new outfit on the rarest of occasions. This is because of the returns.

My mom has the worst case of "buyer's remorse" in all of history -- on clothing items under $20. She returns items so frequently that she knows the cashiers by name (I'm fairly certain some of them get a Christmas card.) I'm convinced that when she checks out with her purchases, they don't actually do anything with her credit card. I think they just make a sort of "Zing!" noise and hand her card back to her. Anticipating the return, they probably just make a note of the item and wait for it to be returned for restocking in the next few days. It just saves everyone a lot of paperwork.

The other thing I remember clearly as a kid were the coupons. My mom had a year's supply of coupons torn from various newspapers that she kept in a little plastic baggie. The baggie was a prototype Ziploc product from the late 70's, and all of the text on the outside was worn off from being carried around for so long. Each trip through the grocery store involved mom stopping occasionally and shuffling through that baggie, until she found the clipping she needed. She knew exactly what items she had coupons for, and if she found expired coupons along the way, they were held out to be tossed at the end of the trip.

The cashiers at the grocery stores in town recognized this baggie, and on many occasions, we would return to the store hours later to retrieve the baggie from the clerk.

"Here you go, Mrs. Hawkins. We saved it for you."

Mom would clutch the wrinkled and torn plastic baggie, breathing a sigh of relief as if it had been me or my sister who had been returned to her. I would frequently look through the baggie in boredom, and there were all kinds of amazing products represented in there, most of which I had never tasted. Why she clipped things that we never ate or used, I'll never understand, but she did develop an amazing agility with scissors. Ne'r a Sunday went by that my dad didn't pick up a section of the paper, only to find it already in tatters; the story he wished to read decimated by an ad for lean ground beef on the flip side.

To this day, my mom can tell you the price of milk or gasoline at any location on the south side of Indianapolis. It's an amazing gift; one that we've suggested multiple times could probably be turned into a website.

I write this not to taunt or make fun of my mom (at least not entirely). I find her quirks endearing, and I appreciate that I grew up with someone who didn't just toss money around carelessly. So as Christmas approaches, and I go shopping for baking supplies and egg nog, I think of my mom and those Christmases long ago...spent gathering groceries at Kroger, Marsh, Mr. D's, Lowell's, IGA, Speedway, Big E, Osco, Meijer...

P.S. It takes a real piece of work to post this a few days before Christmas when the mother in question is trigger happy to return things to the store... Love ya mom!