EASILY AMUSED.......IN BULK

I get sort of a perverse pleasure when shopping at a bulk warehouse store like Sam’s Club or Costco. Now, I can’t speak for Sam’s, but, I like to make a “Costco run” every couple of weeks or so. It’s a way to replenish our pantry and to replenish my enthusiasm for life. It’s really very invigorating To me, it’s tantamount to that IKEA commercial where the woman looks at her receipt and does a mad dash through the parking lot screaming “Start the car…..start the car,” giving a final, enthusiastic “Woo hoo” as her husband drives away, completely confused. Looking at my receipt from Costco as I lug in boxes and boxes from the car brings me back to that pseudo-satisfying feeling from back in the 60’s that I had gotten one over on “The Man.” It’s a sense of pride that one gets when coming out of a negotiation with more than you had in mind when you went in. I have five kids, so, there was a time when going to Costco or Sam's was justified by virtue of the fact that we went through all the stuff I would bring home in about two days. With growing kids, food certainly seems to evaporate when they come within a few feet of it. But, my kids are grown and have moved on. There are two of us in the house now and we really have no use for an entire crate of peaches or a box containing twelve thousand stalks of asparagus. Even if the produce is out of season here, it may not be in Chile or Mozambique. And yet, I buy it. I figure that even if more than half of them go bad, I’ve really only paid for about a half a dozen peaches or a couple of servings of asparagus anyway, so, I’ve gotten away with something and a poor farmer in Chile or Mozambique has had all of his backbreaking labor justified. Someone just paid, what to him, is probably a year’s wages, even if it IS a literal “pittance” to us. After all, where else will you find an entire crate of peaches for $5.99 It’s not just food. My wife asked me to get some dish washing gel. She pays about $5.00 for a 75 ounce container of name brand gel. Not that much, but, at Costco, they had a 125 ounce container of the name dish washing gel for under $9.00. Now, here is where the deal gets really sweet. Right next to it was the Costco brand. There were two 125 ounce containers of the gel for $8.00. I know that this should last us for about a year and a half. I am tempted to knock on the neighbors doors and ask if they have any dishes they need washed. Paper towels are another incredible savings. A case of 12 mega rolls of a name brand, very absorbent paper towel is only about $11.00. The 12 mega rolls give you the same amount of paper towels as 20 regular rolls. I need to start spilling more. After all, we have plenty of absorbency at our fingertips and I’d hate to see it go unused. Now we still do plenty of shopping at our local grocery store. I suppose it’s because of convenience and familiarity as much as anything else, but, I can truly say that I’ve never walked out of a Publix and had the urge to yell, “Start the car, start the car.”