Many people have a candy sweet tooth, and I am no different. If I happen to be at the store, and hit the candy aisle, my candygasm meter kicks in - I gotta have some. Yes, its bad for me, and yes, I will have to run extra far tomorrow to burn it off, but somehow, the only thought in my mind at that very moment is exactly which of those lovely candies will I be enjoying that night. I know - I am simply writing what happens to many people, but hey, this blog is about getting stuff out there, so blame me for saying what most of you do as well. Don't deny it.
So today, I hit Wal-mart. Of course, I still wish they married Wal-mart and Denny's (see my earlier blog on that one), but I will get over that one. So I am there to buy a gift for my sister, when I see to the right of the front door, just as you walk in, a spectacle to behold. That's right - candy! Not just any candy mind you, but Easter candy, as in the same Easter candy you could have bought last week so the kiddies could hunt for, but now today, is available for the low low price of 50% off. Candygasm meter overload people.
At this point, its important to clarify something. The candy purchase guilt meter does usually have a ceiling. Although its truly relative, there comes a point in time when the price of some candy gets too high for me to want to buy. In economics, you call that your marginal propensity to candy consume. Candy is not always cheap, so a few small packs of candy, usually chocolate or licorice, should suffice for my budget. Could I always buy more, of course! But that handy guilt meter holds me back.
Yet not today. At half price, I'm going all in. And of course, I was not the only one. There were people calling clerks over to verify the candy was indeed priced properly. I saw people run off to those remote price scanners just to verify the prices were what they were. They even had a clerk assigned to the area to keep order among us candy crazed consumers. You hear people mumbling stuff about how they are buying it for the office (yeah, right, like I've ever seen Easter Candy sitting on someone's desk at work), or how Junior got a broken chocolate bunny on Sunday, so this would be a great replacement. Whatever words coming out of their mouths were truly the excuses they were giving to the rest of the people around the area since we all knew Junior moved out 10 years ago, and this candy was going into grandma's belly. There is no charade for me, and I am not too proud to fill my basket with as much as I could get (which I'd be willing to eat of course - some of that crap is truly crap whatever the price).
By the time I had checked the shelves, a hurricane had hit the store. Candy was everywhere, mixed in every way, nothing ever matching the signage. It looked like the cabbage patch craze all over again - people waiting for other people to put candy down, so they could snatch it up. Who cared if the candy was good - it was 50% off, what more did you need to know.
The same experience occurs the day after Halloween, Christmas and Valentines Day. I'd like to propose a new word to best define this process. I will call it candy shlopping = the art of buying seasonal candy on the days after the specific holiday, at which point the candy was significantly discounted to clear off the shelves. Lots of people candy shlop, and if any of you have seen the lack of Halloween candy just days after Halloween, you'll know its become a tradition in and of itself.
Time to be quiet now. Besides, I have lots of chocolate to eat now.
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