COVID-19 Update: online shopping

As if COVID wasn’t bad enough, now you can’t even go to the mall to shop without running into feral packs of domestic terrorists beating the shit out of white people and interrupting meals at the food court with requests to raise a Black Power fist.

Where does that leave people like me who are uncomfortable with the online shopping experience?

I’ll tell you. Fucked.

I’ve never been able to navigate the choppy waters of the retail website. I’ll spend twenty minutes thinking I’m buying something only to find myself back at the homepage I started at. The only thing having been accomplished is giving my credit card information to another store that’s only hours from getting hacked. But recently, knowing my mall options were no longer on the table, and knowing that a change of season was right around the corner, and with it the appropriate garments that needed to be worn, I sat down and once again attempted to buy some clothes online.

Fast forward to a series of packages being delivered to my home over the next few days. Obviously if everything went well I wouldn’t be writing this.

Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard of people selling used clothes online?

Of course you haven’t! What kind of demented mind thinks to sell old clothes online?! There should have been a giant red warning label on the link that brought me to these clothes saying “Danger! Used clothes being sold here!”

I had no idea. It never even occurred to me that someone would be peddling used clothes. I just thought I found some sellers that were offering exceptional values.

When I unwrapped my first parcel I couldn’t wait to put the shirt on and admire myself in the mirror. Having done so, two things became very clear to me; 1. It had a mustard stain on the front of it, and 2. The person who last wore this shirt was no longer alive.

It reeked of nursing home. The smell was overwhelming. There was no mistaking it.

My head swam.

“No wonder it was only five dollars. You fool.”

I felt violated. Somebody was obviously clearing out the closets of the dead and selling their clothes to unsuspecting suckers like myself. Sure enough, over the next few days I assembled a wardrobe that would have looked completely appropriate at any old folk’s home in the country.

Here’s a bit of trivia. You can’t wash out the smell of the nursing home. You can wash something ten times with the most powerful flowery scents known to mankind and it will come out of the dryer ready to be put onto the comatose body of a ninety year old. When wearing that shirt whatever drink you pour yourself will end up prune juice. The music of Lawrence Welk will play uninvited in your head.

I have to admit it made me examine my fashion sense a bit. Why was I attracted to the clothing of a bygone era in the first place?

By the end of the week the delivery guy would walk up my driveway holding the package at arm’s length. His face letting it be known that he not only didn’t want to smell like nursing home the rest of the day but he didn’t appreciate me desecrating the closets of the recently deceased.

“I’m not the tomb robber here!” I felt like yelling after him, “I’m the victim. I didn’t know…”, but I didn’t bother. Who would believe a man who smelled like I did? If dementia ever makes a cologne…

I’m wearing one of the shirts now. What else can I do? It seems not only wasteful to throw them away, but somehow disrespectful. Someone somewhere used to wear this shirt. Shuffling around the retirement community and trying his best to look dapper. Not cool. Dapper. It’s much harder to attain dapper-status.

So here I sit, neither dapper nor cool, smelling like the soon-to-be departed. Trying to wear the shirt to the best of my ability as a tribute to someone I never met. Trying to live up to the expectations of someone I invented in my head.

Damn Black Lives Matter. Damn them to hell.