Soap Box

*NOTE* Charlie will be back with a new soapbox on Monday, in the meantime, here's a fun Soapbox Rewind from 2009. - TeamCDB

Well, right at the outset let me go ahead and admit it, I hate shopping and the sooner I get it over with, the better I like it.

I walk into a store and say, “Have you got this in so and so size? Give me two of 'em. Here’s my credit card,” and I’m out the door going about my merry way with the disagreeable task of shopping over with.

To me, walking around in stores trying on clothes or shoes or trying to decide if this piece goes with that piece is one sorry way to spend a day.

Recently my wife accompanied me on a business trip to New York City. I had some down time and agreed to go walking down 5th Avenue, look in some shop windows and maybe go some place where she could buy a pair of shoes.

As we made our way up the street, stopping every fifteen seconds to look in the window of stores at things I had absolutely no interest in, you know, glass wear, ladies clothes and other totally mundane kinds of things, I notice that there is a glaring absence of places like Bass Pro Shops or Cabela’s on the streets of Manhattan; not one knife shop or camping supply store to break the monotony of all the Saks Fifth Avenues and Macy’s, all in all not a very interesting place for a man to spend his afternoon, especially on a Saturday during football season.

After walking about 27 miles through honking taxicabs and sidewalks loaded with other women out doing the same thing Hazel was, we finally arrived at the department store here she wanted to buy her shoes.

I learned a long time ago that the only way to survive a female shopping trip is to take a good book, find a chair and relax until said female shops out that area, then you move on to another area.

I was sans book that day but I still found an uncomfortable chair in the shoe department to wait out the interminable search for and trying on of enough shoes to outfit a small village.

While I sat there I started noticing the other ladies who were there for the same purpose and why shoe salesmen don’t all end up in the nuthouse is beyond my understanding.

“Do you have this with a higher heel, is this the only color you have this in? I don’t like the bow. Do you have it without the bow? Now that I think about it, I think I do like the bow, could you bring those back??

Ladies are touchy about their shoe size, they’ll say, “I wear a size 7, knowing all the time that the salesman is going to have to go back and bring out an 8 or maybe even a 9, ”I guess it’s just the cut of this shoe, I ordinarily wear a 7.”

Uh huh, ain’t no way you’ll ever get that boat into a pair of sevens.

One lady kept trying on boots and looking at herself in the mirror, then she’d take those off and try on a couple of more pairs and then try on the original pair again.

I could have bought a new car in the time it took this lady to make up her mind about a pair of boots.

Maybe I’m dense or old fashioned, or just plain out of touch with modern society, but I just don’t get it when it comes to shopping. I’d much rather be sitting on a creek bank somewhere with a cane pole and a can of worms.

It’s cheaper and a heck of a lot more fun.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, and for our country

God Bless America

— Charlie Daniels

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