COLUMN: Let the accountants sort it out
Utah is number one in bankruptcies. This should be more intriguing and inexplicable than our number-oneness is Jell-O and whacko desert-dwelling polygamists.
Who needs drugs when the simple act of shopping has become such an adrenaline-pumping experience? We’re addicted to the bargain, the deep bin of discounted detritus.
It’s Tuesday afternoon at a time when no one should be shopping or drinking, but there are more people doing the former than the latter attending the grandest of openings at high holy of wholesale Spam’s Club. Spam’s, which is somehow bigger and cheaper than even the Daisy Cutter bomb of all discount stores Sprawl-Mart, opened Oct. 11. It is, in fact, the dumb uncle of Sprawl-Mart with the added feature of required membership. I’m not exactly sure what the requirements are for membership because I was there on a visitor’s pass, but I’m guessing the standards are about as high as those of the American Association of Retired Persons. You have to be alive and over a certain age. Since I am both, I seized the day.
“Attention Spam’s Club shoppers, have you ever wanted to change the color of your eyes?”
“What?” I thought. For a moment, ghoulish visions of bins of discount eyeballs culled from unwilling donors came to mind, but it turned out that it was just an offer for colored contact lenses at the Spam’s Club eye center. Still, do you really want to trust your eyes to someplace that sells frozen fish sticks in fork-lift-required sized boxes? We have strange ideas about thrift. Fish sticks hold the same place in our economy as flying across the country in big heavy metal tubes that can’t glide and don’t carry parachutes.
“Only $99 round trip to Cleveland? Sure, stuff me in that 30-year-old plane flown by underpaid pilots and maintained by striking mechanics.”
Spending is addictive and Utah has the DTs. Sure, you think it is no big deal. All your friends are doing it. They all have new cars and stackable Maytags in the remodeled laundry room. They can handle it. But somebody keeps upping the dosage and once-a-week mall-hopping turns into twice a week and then it is daily and then you are on the home shopping network, the Internet and you even start listening to telemarketing calls.
You know you are out of control, but there is always someone willing to tell you that you’re not. It’s OK, let’s just go down to Spam’s on a work day – just for a little while. The next thing you know, you are a member and staggering out behind a fully loaded forklift of merchandise you don’t need and can’t remember buying. It’s even sort of funny until you wake up in a pile of your own credit card receipts.
You still think, “I can handle it. I can kick this habit on Monday, or maybe Sunday because nothing is open on Sunday.” But then you find yourself trolling Bamazon.com on Sunday afternoon and nervously thumbing through the Potter Tree Barn catalog. Next, you are face down in the trash can looking for that Lion’s Bank home equity loan offer that you threw away yesterday.
Utah’s got a problem right here in Zion City and it’s spelled with “C” and it rhymes with “edit.”
We have state-controlled liquor stores, while not state-controlled store stores?
Dennis Hinkamp’s column appears every Friday in The Statesman. Comments can be sent to him at slightlyoffcenter@attbi.com.