Do you see them? Do you hear them?

I took this weekend off and went for a day of boutique-type shopping. About an hour south of me there's a small city that prides itself on its "historic downtown with unique shops." There are many antique shops, and a couple of quilt shops, and a tiny yarn shop, and lots of shops selling what one of my friends derides as "stuff you don't really need" - scented candles, hard-milled soap, fancy keychains, that kind of thing.

(True, maybe you don't REALLY need it. But I like the hard-milled soap. I'd much rather use a nice bar of soap made by hand by someone who is interested in color and botanical extracts and such than a bar of Ivory that I can get 3 for $4 at the wal-mart but that will go all mushy in a few weeks).

I like going there and shopping for several reasons:

1. It is AWAY. I mean, it's out of town for me - if someone "needs" me for something, well, they just have to keep "needing" me until I get home. Or do it themselves. (I keep my cell phone turned off for just that reason).

2. It's nicer stuff than is sold locally. Oh, I understand the whole economics of it: I live in an economically-depressed area. Most folks where I live live on a stricter budget than I do, a budget that doesn't necessarily allow for bars of hard-milled soap or $1-a-piece chocolate truffles. But the thing is, in Wal-Mart-land, so many things kind of get lowest-common-denominatorized that sometimes, it's almost a little depressing. (I know: again, I have a friend who claims that "if you can't get it at wal-mart, you don't need it." Well, I suppose again, it depends on how stringently you define NEED. Technically, one doesn't NEED toilet paper as long as one has some leaves or an old copy of the Sears-Roebuck catalog. And one doesn't NEED drinking glasses, as one could drink water straight from the tap or milk straight from the carton and buy all other beverages in single-serving cans).

3. Did I mention that there's a yarn shop? And two quilt shops? I have none of that locally - my only local crafts-supply option is the aisle-and-a-half at the wal-mart, and that cants heavily to scrapbooking these days. (Scrapbooking is just one of those things I do not get. It's not that I think people who scrapbook are silly or are wasting their time or anything, it's just...it doesn't appeal to me. And that lack of appeal, I have to admit, extends to my being sat down by one of the scrapbookers and made to look at months' worth of family pictures, mounted in clever and cute ways.) So it's a real joy to get out and see what's out there, what new products are available. I suspect the way I feel is kind of like how the pioneer wife felt when she FINALLY managed to persuade her husband to hook up the buckboard and take the whole family into town to the dry-goods store.

I always wind up buying more than I "need," because I tell myself: and it might be a long time before you get back here. Again - I bet that's a bit of what the pioneer women felt, except they would doubtless have been on a far stricter budget.

That said - I find that more and more, my enjoyment of taking a day out is a bit...intruded upon...by the way some people act.

More and more, I see people who act as if they believe either
a. they are at home in their living rooms and all that is around them is merely a virtual, online experience

b. they are in some kind of a bubble and no one else can see or hear what they're doing

or

c. They are the Most Important Person in the World and so it doesn't matter what those other shlubs think or feel; being the Most Important Person entitles them to act however they want.

We have our own version of Valley Girls around here. I'm not sure what else to call them. They're typically very "priveliged" women - usually they're what some deride as the "idle rich." Trophy wives, some of them. Their days seem to largely be filled with shopping, decorating and re-decorating their houses, going out for lunch with their friends, and...I'm not sure what else because I only ever see them out shopping and in restaurants.

The ones I saw Saturday were no exception. Cell phone plastered to the ear, they barrel through antique store after antique store, gabbing away to their invisible friend (usually it's some litany of complaints about husband/kids/gardener/housekeeper/neighbors or an ongoing discussion of how they CAN'T find the thing they WANT. Or how some store had the NERVE to have the thing they wanted, but have a SOLD tag on it...that some other patron got to it first).

I don't know. This behavior always strikes me as strange because when I'm in an antique shop (or even an "things you don't really need" shop), I like to slow down. I like to walk through, paying attention to the things, considering the ones that catch my eye. Is that wall-shelf just what I need? $65 is a lot of money to me but it's a cool-looking shelf. No, wait, on closer inspection it's kind of roughly cut; poor workmanship's covered up with a coat of white paint. Okay, move on....

For me, when I get to go shopping like that, it's a whole day thing. It's an escape. I'm usually alone (and NO, that doesn't bother me. I LIKE shopping alone). Rarely, I'm with a single close friend or with my mother. But at any rate - the point of the day is looking at stuff, considering stuff, enjoying the stuff.

Watching the Southern Valley Girls (and I nearly got run over by one of them; she was walking fast and not watching where she was going), I get the feeling that for them, shopping is kind of like me going to the wal-mart at the end of the day when I realize I'm out of milk and I need it: get in, get what you need, get out.

It's very much "hunter" as opposed to "gatherer" and that strikes me as strange behavior for an antique shop.

The Southern Valley Girls are also the same people who SPEAK. VERY. LOUD. AND. STACCATO. to the Hispanic lady behind the counter of the sandwich shop - they assume she doesn't speak English, when in fact, if they had paid attention to her interaction with previous customers in line, they'd see that she speaks English at least as well as they do.

Oh, and they keep up the conversation on their cell phones while they're ordering.

(I'm sorry, but I consider that the height of rudeness: if someone is waiting on you - like at a lunch counter, or a cosmetics counter, or at a checkout stand, HANG UP THE BLASTED PHONE. There is a fellow human being in front of you. Acknowledge them. Even if checkout-counter people are surly sometimes. They deserve at least your attention. Your invisible friend will wait for you.)

And, still on their cell phones, they sit down - two or three at a table - still on the cell to someone else.

It's really bizarre to me. I suppose it's because I don't LIKE talking on the phone (even as a teenager I didn't talk on the phone much; I never "got" the marathon gab-fests with girl friends or with the guy you were "going with." Although actually, I think most of those consisted of both of you just sitting there holding the phone, not knowing what to say.) But I look at it and I'm like: you have two friends in front of you, and you can't get off the horn with your other friend long enough to talk with them? Why even meet for lunch, then?

I also got to hear an awful lot of one-sided conversations: again, mostly complaints about husband/boyfriends. (And yet, people pity me because I'm single).

I really DO NOT UNDERSTAND the need to be on the cell phone for that long. I know I don't have anything that interesting to say - I can barely eke out a 20 minute conversation on the phone with my PARENTS once a week, for goodness sake. And I'd suspect they're more interested in what's going on in my life than most friends would.

But the biggest thing that gets me is the whole "person in a bubble" phenomenon - I was jostled, stepped on, nearly run into - all in the span of a few hours. And it wasn't that crowded - it was sort of a rainy day and there weren't as many people out as there often are. But it's getting, more and more, like people are so intent on the person who's speaking in their ear that they fail to notice that they're bumping into another person on the sidewalk. (Or maybe they don't consider it; maybe the person on the sidewalk isn't a person to them?)

It makes me kind of sad - it's like we are becoming a nation of navel-gazers, people who can't see past the tips of our noses. I wonder what would happen if someone had a heart attack, or a stroke, or fainted, or something, on the street? I like to think that someone would immediately step up and get help for the person, but looking at some of the people I saw Saturday, I almost feel like at least some of them would sigh in annoyance (again, to their Invisible Friend) and roll their eyes as they stepped over the stricken person.

I wonder if there's a bigger connection with what's going on in society to this - the fact that it's increasingly hard to have any kind of discussion of a controverisal topic without someone becoming mean-spirited about it and stooping to ad hominem attacks rather then trying and debating the IDEAS on their merits. Or of kids who grow up with basically feral manners, who don't understand the importance of saying "excuse me" or "thank you" or not making hurtful remarks to people (I know, I know: "that's kids." They've done it for ages. But it seems to be getting meaner lately).

I don't like the thought of us becoming a nation of islands unto ourselves, where we are all tiny tinpot dictators of all we survey, where we justify rudeness to others because they are "other," and where, instead of stopping and trying to enjoy whatever is in our vicinity, we are so focused on our litany of complaints to our Invisible Friend speaking in our ears, that we don't see the birds singing or the flowers blooming or the artwork in the shops or all of the wonderful things that surround us, if we just LOOKED.