Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not whenever I can find it (if I can) on the local market.
NOW.
It’s spectacularly convenient to be able to order up this little thingy and that little doo-dad and have it delivered right to your door. Yes. That much must be admitted. That much must be admired.
But the other day, I wanted one silly little, minor little, once always-available-about-everywhere little thing, and I wanted it now. Today. Ideally, within the hour.
It was the sort of thing you used to be able to find in a type of store called a “dime store,” such as a TG&Y: chain stores that sold inexpensive handy-dandy gadgetry that people use around the house and the car and the yard.
No more! Far as I can tell, dime stores no longer exist.
I drove from pillar to post searching…
- Albertson’s does not carry it.
- Safeway does not carry it.
- Target does not carry it.
- Bed Bath & Beyond no longer exists.
- Walmart does not carry it.
- Lowe’s does not carry it.
- AJ’s does not carry it…
On and on and gas-guzzlingly on. NO ONE carries it.
What is “it”?
It’s this: an old-fashioned purse-sized, pocket-sized spiral-bound notepad.
Apparently they still make them. Although of late retailers will not let you copy an image and paste it into your effing blog post….
You just can’t find them. At least not in brick-and-mortar retail stores. I searched all over the effing city, and nobody had these things.
Upshot: It’s not that you can order it from Amazon. It’s that you HAVE TO order it from Amazon. And if you need it now? Well, screw you, m’dear.
Ugh! I am sooo unstuck in time! My God, sometimes I feel like I live not in a different era but on a different planet from the one I grew up on.
And while we have many, many blandishments that are wonderful and amazing…well… Are they?
We have these awesome phones we can carry around! Whoop-de-doo!
- Now anyone who takes a whim to do so can pester us on the phone as we drive around or hike or bicycle ride or sit in a meeting or…whatEVER.
- Now advertisers can track us around the city and harass us at will.
- Now if our car craps out and we don’t have one of these gadgets with us — or, Gawd forfend if it’s not charged up — we are in deep, deep trouble.
- Now if we’re on the lam from the cops, the authorities can track us down, intercept us, and bust us…
Hmmmmm…. THIS is a good thing?
We have delivery services that bring everything from a cheap notebook to a filet mignon to our doorstep. But what if we want to shop for it in person? What if want to see what we’re getting before we plop down our credit card?
What if, f’r hevvinsake, we want it NOW?
Ugh. What a brave new world!
Perhaps try an Office Depot or a drugstore?
They closed the Office Depot in our parts, to my great disgust. In the same shopping center, they’re closing the Target.
I did check the drugstore here in the ‘Hood, and also the large Albertson’s straight across the street from it. That was surprising: I really DID expect to find the things in one of those stores.
Dollar Tree has all kinds of wee memo books, coil bound or otherwise.
I thought about that one: there’s a Dollar Tree or something very like it in the Walmart shopping center up the road. Did look around in there briefly, but didn’t see anything like that.
Or Family Dollar – we don’t have those nearby, but they have locations in your neck of the woods
Target was out when I first looked for a notepad with side spirals. I have plenty of the ones with top coils. I was able to find a few at CVS.
Of course, after I got the ones there, Target had them back in stock and cheaper.
I just figured it was a random COVID shortage like so many other things that are hard to find when you want them.