It was Just

When I was twelve, I learned a very important lesson. I learned how to shop; an ability I have never forgotten.

On a hot August morning my Mother gave me a five dollar bill instructing me to go to Sterns Department Store on 42nd Street. I was permitted to buy a new dress for the first day of school. If there was any change remaining, it was mine to use for whatever I wanted.

I walked to the corner of 57th Street and Ninth Avenue and took the Number Eleven bus downtown to 42nd Street. It didn’t take very long for me to select a new cotton dress especially in my price range. If I recall rightly, the cost was $3.98 leaving me slightly less than a dollar in change. I vaguely remember the NYC bus fare was ten cents for a round trip ticket in those years.

With my unexpected largesse literally burning a hole in my pocket, I chose to stop at the nearest soda fountain and indulged in my very first hot fudge sundae. Thus I totally depleted my wealth of five dollars, while learning that shopping was quite a bit of fun.

For decades later, I expanded my expertise in shopping, never losing the joy I felt on that first solo expedition.

That is until Covid and 2020 changed my entire outlook.

I discovered there was no longer any need to go to different neighborhoods or specialty boutiques to find what I need or want.

Suddenly everything, and I do mean everything, can be found with one gentle tap of my finger on my Ipad.

There is no longer any requirement for transportation and the selections are far superior to what I encountered in Sterns Department Store on a hot summer day ever so long ago.

Granted no longer can I sit at a marble soda counter and feast on an ice cream delicacy, but I can order just about any food including frozen items from Goldbelly or numerous counterparts.

It is so easy. Selections are amazing, prices quite fair, and yet why am I yearning sentimentally for buses, department stores and ice cream parlors?

Somehow the fun seems gone.