Currently reading Billy Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Typically humourous and engaging Bryson, it however tells a real story about life in the 50’s and covers the blandification of the US at the end of the decade with the rise of chains and malls and the deaths of downtowns. That’s a subject I am extremely attracted to. It was during my move from Florida to Seattle that it struck me so hard that I could drive from one corner of this country to the other and eat at the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, pump at the same gas stations no matter where I was. It was hugely depressing. I don’t know how it is in the middle of the country or in smaller towns (in the US, we stick to the corners, the urban centers, or the wilderness), but at least in my corner of the universe, that trend was halted and is being significantly rolled back. My neighborhood has only one fast food chain restaurant (currently a KFC, soon to be replaced by a Jack in the Box) that isn’t Dick’s. And Dick’s doesn’t count since it’s a fabulous greasy fast food restaurant that is locally owned and entirely contained within Seattle. But anyway …
One line in the book jumped out at me: “… joyous consumerism is a world of diminishing returns.” When you decide to give up income (regardless of how much you saved up to spend in the duration), you automatically start assessing the cost and need of the materialistic attitude. When I turned 30 my income started escalating and my debt disappeared. Everything was disposable income. After 8 years of scraping by and accumulating monumental debt, it was all changed. I didn’t have to shop at Marshalls anymore, I only had to avoid the haute couture section of Nordstrom’s (and sometimes I didn’t avoid even that section). The media system that had seemed so perfectly adequate for so long now was completely unacceptable for our newfound tastes (I admit, that was primarily the fiancé—I just went along with it except for the insistence on the flat panel television; I simply despise the amount of room the old televisions took up).
It was orgiastic in nature, and it was wonderful. See a pair of Alexander McQueen shoes that tickle my fancy? Owned. See a dress that will likely never be on the market again. Owned. Skis, snowboards, bikes, hiking boots and gear. Everything to make our leisure time fashionable, fun, and top of the line.
But at some point we stopped having the leisure time to enjoy the equipment or wear the fancy shoes. And that’s where the diminishing returns came in. If all you’re working for is to buy the stuff that you’ll never use, then there’s no point. So, I stopped working, realized I pretty much had everything we wanted, stopped buying, and started enjoying. I’ve actually worn my fabulous shoes more since I quit than I did in the six months preceding it. I just make up reasons to dress up.
I’m not against consumerism or buying outrageous things. I’m only against it when you never get to use it. And we’re pretty set on what we got. Except of course the fiancé now wants a fancy new camera. Hey, he’s the one working, he can afford it. Of course, this new lifestyle could crumble to bits depending on Manolo Blahnik's fall collection.
BTW, back to Bill Bryson, I highly recommend reading his Shakespeare. Especially if you had to study him ad nausea like I did in high school and college (curse of being an English major). What you’ll learn from Bryson is simple: No matter how much we study Shakespeare, we know next to nothing about the man. Everything you think you know (beyond the born in Stratford Upon Avon), is probably made up. We know he lived, he wrote plays, he died. It’s a pretty short book.
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