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PAGE 10, APRIL 13, 2009, THE ISLANDER
■ Dave Barry,
Non-stop shopping
I can't shop with my wife. The
problem is that she almost never has
a clear objective. I ALWAYS have a
clear objective. Without a clear objec
tive, you're just wandering randomly
around a store, which is NOT the point
of shopping.
This is not just my opinion: This is
the opinion of literally thousands of
Nobel Prize-winning scientists whose
names are available upon request.
These scientists have traced the origins
of shopping back to prehistoric times,
when "shopping" was called "hunting"
and primitive man would make out his
"shopping list" by drawing, on his cave
wall, a picture of his objective, usually
a large wad of meat in the form of, say,
a yak. He would then go out into the
wild, locate his objective, and make
the "purchase" by whomping the yak
on the head with a club. This primitive
shopper did not dilly-dally. He did not
ask whether the yak was on sale. He
did not try to accessorize the yak. No,
he just WHOMPED THE YAK, and
then he dragged it home, stopping only
to whomp the primitive sales guys who
tried to force him to purchase the ser
vice agreement.
This is the biological basis for shop
ping. And this is why, even today, most
men, when they shop, are yak-whom-
pers. They do not wander: They go
straight for the kill. I know I do.
For example, recently, in a surgi
cal shopping strike so blindingly fast
you would need slow-motion replay to
even see it, I located and secured a new
cell phone that, in addition to being
a phone, receives e-mail AND takes
Dr. Gillespie
Continued from Page 7
easily be modified and adapted to any
departing condition. Headings would
exist which leave space for instruction
personalization and, in many areas
- like diet, for example - check-off alter
natives might be enough.
Medication and dosage instruction
should have their own space - and so
should physicians and other involved
healthcare workers have a communica
tion space.
I know, I know, such home-going
instruction devices would be subject
to errors - but errors as sinister as our
present haphazard system? No way.
Of course, one of us 80 year old
seniors recovering from an angioplasty,
might be shipped home with such indi
vidualized discharge instructions which
were meant for a young nursing mother
of a newborn. That certainly could hap
pen - but even us worn-out octogenar
ians can fathom that our chest wound
doesn’t need a nursing bra! Let’s just
keep working on it - the written dis
charge plan that is. □
By Dave Barry
extremely low-quality photographs. It
has changed my life. Now, when I'm
not using my phone's cell-phone fea
ture ("Hello? Hello? Hello?") I can use
the camera feature to record precious
moments that I can share with others.
("Here's a picture of my daughter's
ballet recital. Or, the Grand Canyon.")
And thanks to my phone's e-mail fea
ture, even when I'm away from my
computer, I can receive the hundreds
of urgent messages I receive every day
from people wishing to enhance my
manhood.
I have a friend named Robert who
has a similar phone, and recently we
discovered that, theoretically, I could
"beam" my address and phone number
from my phone to his phone THROUGH
THE AIR. I say "theoretically" because
we could not get it to actually work,
although we spent a good 10 minutes
standing about a foot apart, pointing
our phones at each other and fruit
lessly pressing buttons. Several women
watched this with some amusement;
they suggested that-get this-it might
be quicker for me to just TELL Robert
my address and phone number, which
would have represented a wanton and
reckless disregard on our part for the
beaming feature.
But my point is that I acquired this
phone via the standard guy method: in
a bold, decisive, lightning-quick stroke.
Whereas my wife, when she gets inside
a store, routinely takes astoundingly
long periods of time to accomplish,
essentially, nothing. She just shops!
With no objective! She can spend what
feels like days just looking at -- without
actually purchasing - stationery. She's
always in the market for stationery
because she's always writing notes to
her women friends, who are always
writing notes back to her thanking her
for her note, which causes HER to write
back to THEM, and so on.
If I needed stationery, bang, I would
grab some stationery and get the hell
out of there. Of course, I don't need
stationery, because, as a guy, I never
write notes. If I ever had a message
for one of my friends, I'd just beam it
to him. Or I will, once I have mastered
that feature.
This classic DAVE BARRY column
was originally published. July 18, 2004
(C) 2009 The Miami Herald. Dist. by
Tribune Media Services. Dave Barry is
a humor columnist for the Miami Her
ald. Write to him do Tropic Magazine,
The Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza,
Miami FL 33132) □
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