I don't like to hunt for stuff.
OK, I guess that doesn't put me in particularly select company, but I tend to carry it to an illogical extreme. Imagine that.
My philosophy is that if you have to look for it, you probably don't use it enough to really need it anyway, so you really have to consider why you need it right now. Which explains why I can't find my electric hedge trimmers, the house phone or the garlic press (whatever that is), but I always know the location of the TV remote.
An addition to that philosophy is the belief that, in most cases, you really have to weigh the actual cost of something versus the amount of time and effort it takes to find it. That's because time is actually money. It's also because I have such a tiny attention span and am so easily distracted that I'll go into the garage looking for a hammer and return with my high school yearbook, an inflated pool ring with a duck on it and my 7-iron. For reasons that made complete sense at the time.
It's probably a character flaw, but if something isn't all that expensive, I'd rather just buy a new one than look for the old one. Which explains why I have about seven turkey injectors, none of them in the same place.
So, when it comes to shopping, I'm definitely not the right guy to send. Because for me, any and all stores are just an extension of my garage/silverware drawer/desk. Mainly, the stuff we need -- just not all the time -- goes to hide there, never to be seen again.
Send me for bread, and I've got it. As long as they haven't changed the label or moved the aisle. Send me for bacon, and I've got it. Again, as long as packaging and location remain the same.
All of which is somewhat frustrating for the Lovely Mrs. Smith, who, periodically and against her better judgment, sends me to the store for things. Which becomes an exercise in futility on such a regular basis that I have to remind her the definition of insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results. Or a small container of buttermilk.
Yes, I know. It has to be frustrating to be in the middle of baking something, realize you're out of chocolate chips, send your husband to the store and have him come back with a bicycle pump, an official Razorback grill cover and ... no chips. Because, as he tells you, they're out of them.
So it had all the makings of a fool's errand the other night when she sent me and the youngest of the progeny to the store to look for, among other things, some kind of milk that comes from either soybeans or almonds. Can't remember which, although I'm pretty sure I don't want to know about the milking process.
We wandered the aisles (that's every aisle, including Lawn and Garden and Automotive) for about three days (or 30 minutes, whichever makes for a better story) and were about to surrender when we broke down and broke the first rule of Manhood: never ask for directions.
And that's when my years of fruitless (at least on those occasions when I wasn't looking for fruit, which actually pretty easy to find) searching came to an end.
It appears that technology has delivered what even my lack of attention to detail cannot ignore: a phone app that lets you type in what you're looking for, then it tells you where that item is.
And so, before we knew it (and after I found my phone, then the app, then stopped checking ball scores, then corrected my constant misspelling and the kind of strange auto-correcting of "soy," then vigorously shook my head up and down until my bifocals found and focused on the aisle number, then tried to decide if the aisles were numbered in strict sequential order or were even-odd, then actually found the thing) we had the milk, and the previous hours (or, 25 minutes) had proven to be a gigantic waste of time. OK, glass half empty.
Now I'm not saying I'll never have trouble finding anything in a store again. For one thing, yeah, that spelling deal. For another, the Lovely Mrs. Smith tends to sneak in stuff that doesn't actually exist, just so I'll appreciate how hard shopping is.
But the cool thing about technology is that there many actual cases of it making the world, if not better, at least easier to navigate. And, in this case, at least, reducing the number of things I have to struggle with.
Now if they can just make an app for the stuff in my garage ...
Commentary on 01/27/2017