Have you ever fake-shopped? I enjoy shopping, the whole process: selection of color, comparison of prices, etc. That is to say I enjoy almost the entire shopping process: I don’t much enjoy the “checking out” part of it unless it is something I’ve saved for. That’s where fake shopping fills the void —the void that is lack of funds. All the enjoyment without the commitment. Well almost all the enjoyment because with fake shopping you don’t follow through with the purchase. Sometimes around Christmas when I frequent online stores I really do make purchases and it is then that I have to laugh at myself: an actual honest to goodness LOL.
I get to the point in my online Christmas shopping when it’s time to open up the virtual shopping cart and put in my payment information.
Surprise!
The shopping cart is full. Let’s see, I’ve got an 8 x 10 foot carpet in there, a couple of curtains in complimentary colors and four throw pillows that throw the whole look together. I quickly delete those items and purchase only the Christmas gifts I’ve chosen.
The memory comes back to me.
Late one evening during the summer with the air conditioner humming full blast I settled into my spot on the couch and, wrapped in my couch blanket (I like the AC to be so cold as to require a lap blanket,) I decided to cruise online stores and redecorate the living room. Errr, sort of. Virtually speaking. Because when I fake shop I park items in the online store’s shopping “cart” but I never check out.
It’s great fun. I do it all the time. Oh at times I get a few email prompts in my inbox: “Would you like to complete your purchase?”
But I never reply to them. I delete them. I would not be able to reply to them anyway because these prompts are computer generated. There’s no way to hit reply. They aren’t sent by real people. In that sense the prompt email is about as fake as my online shopping experience was.
Except that I thoroughly enjoy my fake shopping.
I don’t need the follow through (buying the item), nor can I afford to follow through.
Here’s a slight downside to fake shopping. Not too long ago, I made an all out search for something. I checked my folded clothes pile, my closet, the dryer, and my closet. I even checked under my bed for my dark brown cardigan. Also I was sure I had a matching Tshirt to go under it.
Then I had another honest to goodness LOL at myself moment. I owned a couple cardigans and sweaters, most of them black. Problem with that was I had impatiently ripped out the tags instead of cutting them out with scissors. So a few of them had little holes at the nape. Also all of them were black. I shopped in earnest online in various stores for just the right color cardigans, with pockets in the front, big enough to allow for shrinkage and just the right sizes.
The experience of choosing a dark brown cardigan with a corresponding Tshirt was so enjoyable, so real, that I’d fooled myself into thinking that I actually owned it!
Ah the fun of fake shopping. Somewhere online, probably in a few different shopping carts, are cardigans, rings, treatments for thinning hair and other things I thoroughly enjoyed fake buying. I’m not the only who passes hours doing this, right?
It’s free fun.
At Christmas I received this simple inexpensive gift: a toilet fishing game.
The idea is to pull up a fish with your fishing pole because each plastic fish has a magnet on the tip of its nose. Although the game is called Toilet Fishing, you don’t have to sit on the toilet to play.
I have enjoyed myself, along with my grandkids, plunking the blue felt pond down on the living room floor and fishing with them.
Oh no! A big catfish in the pond! That’s what I say when the cat jumps on the felt pond.
I have a plan. Since the kids enjoy playing so much (it’s an acquired skill to aim and catch a fish that takes practice and determined motor movement) I am going to purchase several plastic water creatures such as starfish or octopi and affix magnets to them to add some variety to our game. (See picture of examples at bottom…Yes I’m REALLY buying them).
That’s an example of something that’s fun and inexpensive.
I played around with the fish from my game and created a Doctor Suess poem.
Can you guess what it is without peeking at the picture at the bottom of this blog?
It’s
One fish
Two fish
Red fish
Blue fish!
Maybe I’ll break down and buy that brown cardigan for real sometime but in the meantime I do enjoy a little fake (no…let’s call it faux as that sounds fancier) shopping now and then. In the meantime remember this:
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.”-Dr. Suess
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