So the last few years, I've been an advocate of Buy Nothing Day, by which I mean I refused to purchase anything on November 23rd and I would stay home and enjoy friends and family, rather then going out and shopping. One year I did have to work at this pottery store I was working at at the time, so I hung a Buy Nothing Day filer in my car window for about a week beforehand and encouraged shoppers who came into the pottery store to reconsider the meaning of Christmas. My family has never been much about buying material things for Christmas anyway; we would usually celebrate by making each other things, eating a big meal together, then going to a church to sing and give thanks for being alive and well.
This year, however, I told a friend of mine that I would go to the Portland Macy's Day parade with her, since it meant so much to her...she also wanted to take advantage of the sales at Macy's to get herself some good rain boots, and so forth...
Now I see why I wasn't missing anything all of those years that I've stayed away from places of business on Buy Nothing Day...why the hell does anyone deal with that headache? The parade was fun...again, it was a testament to the tremendous amount of overconsumption of the season; but I'm a geek when it comes to marching bands; I get all excited and dazzled by the sparkly uniforms, the drums, the flags, the girls with the batons...I especially like the bands with the bagpipes and so forth...
But then, Sliver decided it was time to enter Macy's, and I cringed as we bustled into the store along with about a hundred other people who had just left the parade as well...it was frightening and I whispered to Sliver "don't let me get lost!" I'm weird around large crowds...they just seem so unnatural and scary to a girl who grew up in a town with only 2,000 people. Sliver rushed over to the boots she wanted and shoved them on, even though they didn't fit her. The shoe department was in upheaval...women wearing too much makeup and their stressed husbands and crying kids were everywhere, throwing shoes all over the floors and yelling for help from store clerks who were running here and there balancing ten boxes of shoes and trying to remember which box went to whom....
It was so frantic, I thought I was in the midst of a stampede on the Kalahari or a feeding frenzy among sharks who have sensed fresh blood...
Sliver bought the boots she wanted, but she wasn't happy with that...she dragged me to the basement of the store to see a stupid little train kids sit in and get their pictures taken in...then she dragged me to the cosmetic department to try on expensive French lotion at a counter that was blasting the song from the end of Little Miss Sunshine that the little girl dances to...
Sliver then dragged me to Starbucks to find a place to sit and eat the lunch we'd packed from yesterday's leftovers...but of course all the tables at Starbucks were completely packed, so we ran across the street to Nordstrom's where a group of PETA folks were protesting the fur being sold inside.
"What's the big deal?" Sliver yelled. "I used to wear a rabbit-skin coat I bought at a thrift store for years...until my cat had kittens on it...."
"Calm down," I said, "I think it is great that they are out here....I don't necessarily believe everything they say, but people like them are preserving freedom of speech..."
"Yeah but I like to wear fur, " Sliver is a feisty old hippy friend of mine, "it's warm and I used to hitchhike all over in my fur coat....it kept me warm man!" She was clearly pissed that people where protesting the day after Thanksgiving, spoiling her fun...."I mean, why do they have to be out here TODAY? Didn't they do enough, getting that fur store to shut down?"
"Well that's what I like about Portland..." I countered... "the fact that anyone can protest anything they want at any time...I mean I attend a lot of anti-war protests, and I'm glad I have the freedom to do that..."
Sliver obstinately sat herself down at a outdoor table right in front of Nordstrom's and began to eat turkey in clear view of the PETA folk...I had no choice but to sit and eat with her (after all, she is 62 and getting her to move would be more trouble than it was worth.) I felt like I was counter-protesting...here I was with this old lady, sitting right next to the PETA folks, pigging out on leftover turkey! Some cops came over to our table to talk to us; Sliver bitched loudly to them about how the PETA people where being grinches. The cops laughed and agreed with her that she had the right to wear fur if she wanted to, she had the right to eat meat if she wanted, and so on. As a mostly vegetarian folk who sympathizes with many of PETAs causes (though certainly not all of them,) I felt almost like leaving Sliver and joining the Anti-Fur protesters....but you can't leave a 62 year old friend alone eating turkey in front of Nordstrom's....
So instead, I hurried her along as fast as I could, and went to the bookstore to purchase The Lorox for Jack, the little boy I watch...
Next year, I'll be back with the Buy Nothing crowd....
Love,
Sycamore Fitch
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