I shop at Sears now. [There, I’ve said it.]
This is a sentence I wasn’t sure I’d ever write or speak publicly, though I’m not exactly sure why that is. Since I started shopping at Sears, probably two years or more ago, I would typically walk to the men’s area, somewhere near the back, and start sorting through racks of pleated Arnold Palmer golf pants and argyle-printed sweater-vests until I found an armload of clothes to take to the dressing room to try on. Always while rifling, I’d keep my back to the main aisle, and always keep an eye over my shoulder to see if I recognized any passersby. Or, more importantly, to see if they recognized me.
It isn’t that Sears is some evil place. I mean, I’m talking about Sears here, not Walmart. But still I had fairly strong reservations about becoming one of their regular patrons. I would often hide in the back of the clothing racks, discretely buy things and try them on when I got home, coolly walk through the men’s area on the way to the appliance and tool area [these are at opposite ends of the store, fyi], casually grabbing a shirt or two as I went.
But all of this is absurd behavior, right? It isn’t normal to be ashamed of being seen in a store? Is it? Maybe it is a little crazy, but it is also a lot explainable: Growing up in a small town just barely within reach of a Christmas Wishbook catalog, results in you showing up to school and other social gatherings looking a lot like your peers. By a lot, I mean, identically.
—I wanted to get the blue, button-up one too, but mom said only the green pullover was on sale.
Was a sentence I heard more often than once between two people, sitting awkwardly and similarly dressed at a dance or birthday party. Hence, Sears became a bane. It stripped us of our individuality, and reduced us all to life-less drones — teal-coloured-silk-shirt-with-bolo-tie-wearing drones. Sure they sold quality, comfortable clothing at moderate prices, but when has that ever mattered to anyone other than Mom?
In recent years, however, all that negative perception has melted away to reveal what was really there all along: a sobering realization that Sears really isn’t that bad a place to shop. We have four notes today to support this realization. These are:
- Sales
It doesn’t matter where you shop, a sale is a sale. Any time a store offers to save you money on something you would have bought anyway is a good time. And in the land of sales, Sears is king: White sales, Weekend sales, Super Saver Saturday sales, Sears Days sales, Appliance and Home Furnishings sales, Winter sales, Spring sales, Summer sales, Back to School sales, just-because-it’s-Tuesday sales. Pick any random date and I can personally guarantee that there’ll be a sale on at Sears.
- Dire Straights
I’m not sure why, but Sears plays a lot music from Dire Straights. I presume it’s to appeal to a broad a spectrum of people in the easiest way, and honestly, I can’t think of a better band to do this than Dire Straights. And I’m not talking about just repeating Sultans of Swing, either—just yesterday, for example, I heard Walk of Life coming through loud and clear on the store’s PA system. Walk of Life for God’s sake! I love that song.
- Comfort fit
I don’t want to delve too far into this one for fear of incrimination. I just want to draw to the readers’ attention that there exists in this cold, cruel, skinny world, pants that expand to fit virtually any waistline, even as it may change on an hourly basis (like in the hour following a buffet dinner, for example). And that’s all I want to say about that.
- Meat slicer demos
That’s right, meat slicer demos. Find me another store where you can have your boring shopping experience delightfully interrupted by a large man with a megaphone, standing atop a milk crate asking for audience volunteers to come up and help him verify that his meat slicer is better than all the competitors. Go ahead, just try and find it. If you don’t believe that this happens, all I can do is beg you to trust that this is not something I would either make up, or lie about.
None of these, of course, are enticing enough reasons to visit Sears on their own, but when coupled with the fact that Sears has become the only store in town with clothes to fit my 6’3” frame, I think you’ll admit that I’ve really struck gold here.
But what to say now of my past perceptions? My former opinions? What to make of the fact that not long ago I had made merciless fun of the seemingly un-ending litany of sales, of the largely dull pastel-nature of the Arnold Palmer collection of summer leisure suits? What can I say about all that now?
At this stage, I’m not entirely sure what to say about it all. But, as I sit here and write in a pair of dress pants that stretch past my ankles, with a sweater on that’s long enough to cover my belt, and a pair of soft, Grandfather-esque, brown leather shoes (double E wide) on my warm, dry feet, I can tell you that I’ll happily take back all of what I said.
You got the last laugh, Sears.
