Cantcha just wait a few days more?

The longest journey begins

with but a single step      

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            Some companies and stores just couldn’t wait until after Remembrance Day, or as they call it in the U.S., Veterans’ Day, before they started their Christmas advertising. Would a few days really make that much difference?

            I asked this question of the boys at the club and the answers I received ranged from the professorial to the downright blasphemous.

“Deer hunting season is over November 17^th,” said Bernie. “If I was hunting white-tailed deer on November 19 and a ranger came along, would he say: ‘oh, a couple of days shouldn’t make much difference’? Of course it makes a difference. During those few days, a store – a BIG store if you know who I mean – could sell many thousands of dollars worth of merchandise just because people – females – wanted to buy their Christmas presents early.”

“That’s a bunch of &%$#*&,” pointed out Leroi in his polite way. “No offence Bernie, but you don’t know your aspect from a hole in the cold hard ground.”

And so it went, with the only one gaining anything – certainly not knowledge – was Clyde the bartender and his employers, our club. So we all felt good, contributing to the well-being of our Scotch Colony Bar and Grill. If anyone were to ask my opinion on the matter, I would have said (as I implied in the first paragraph) that a few more days wouldn’t make or break any store, and the thanks they received from their customers would return to them in spades, as the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 11:1-2. or was it John chapter two?

            Whichever one it was, what happened was that the old guys cast their bread upon the water and it turned into wine. No, that’s not right: they cast their bread (rice, in other words) upon the water and it returned to them after a while. Either that of the water turned into wine and then…never mind.

 

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            On to another subject: This is the month when we of a certain age remember where we were when John F. Kennedy was killed. I was fifteen years old at the time and in grade two and my classmate Judy Inman came in to the classroom and said: “President Kennedy has been assassinated!”

            People a lot younger than I, and people a lot older than I, don’t realize today what this meant to people my age. JFK represented hope, a change from the stodgy values of the 1950s when the main thing one could ever hope for was a bungalow, 2.3 kids who mostly stayed out of jail, and a job that lasted. I guess we got out of that routine quickly enough. We who grew up in the Sixties were happy with a tent and a cell phone. That is, a phone in or near our jail cell after we got arrested for protesting whatever the government was doing that day.

 

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            Don’t you just love November? It’s the time of year when that first ‘common cold’ hits with a vengeance, and, as we know from Romans, Chapter 12, that vengeance stuff belongs to you-know-who. As I write, my son and I here in New Brunswick and my daughter in Calgary all have some version of a cold or flu. Here in the Picture Province, our colds have lasted about a month now and by my calculations and history, they each have 11 days to go.

            Other than the early Christmas shopping that I mentioned earlier, I have everything bought for the big day on Dec. 25. Because of my gender and its obvious handicaps, I will not buy any presents until Dec. 23 at the earliest, but this year I may wait until Dec. 27 or so. What bargains! And you can buy a Christmas tree for about 98 cents then. It’s like buying a turkey two days after Thanksgiving; the grocery store owners meet you in the parking lot and practically force you to take the turkeys at a dollar each. Oh, I love capitalism!

            I and a gang of high-end (they were sitting on stools) community economists were talking about what needs to be done for the present New Brunswick ‘economy’. Harold F. said that governments cutting jobs is exactly the wrong thing to do because they’re just ruining the rural areas.

 

            Then I said we should cut down on our buying of Christmas presents, which of course was just wrong because that hurts the stores. The consensus? About 1:14 am we decided that drinking more lemonade and spending all our money on ‘foolishment’ was just the answer. Next morning I made my first purchase – aspirin. You gotta start somewhere.        

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