Aunt Erma's Cope Book Read Online Free Page A

coffee, and a complete line of feminine products in their handbags. I never did that.
    But we all believed. We believed if we converted to all the products that marched before our eyes, we could be the best, the sexiest, the freshest, .the cleanest, the thinnest, the smartest, and the first in our block to be regular.
    Purchasing for the entire family was the most important thing I had to do.
    In 1969, a man walked on the moon. Big deal! That same year I found a pair of gym shoes that would make my son jump higher than a basketball hoop.
    A birth-control pill was perfected that would make an impact on the population of the entire world. Hosanna! I discovered a little man for my toilet bowl that cleaned as it flushed.
    Our government was involved in a cover-up. So what? It was enough for me to know that while I was in bed reading, my oven was cleaning itself.
    My children dominated my buying habits and I knew it. They could sing beer commercials before their eyes could focus.
    I remember one day standing in front of a cupboard with eleven boxes of half-eaten cereal ranging from Fortified Blinkies and Captain Sugar to Toasted Wriggles, Heap of Honey, and Cavity Krispies. They didn't snap, crackle, or pop any more. They just lay there on the shelf turning stale year after year.
    I told the kids I had had it and there would be no more new cereal brought into the house until we cleaned up what we already had. I even did some fast arithmetic and figured out that a box of Bloated Oats had cost me a total of $ 116.53. This included repairing my tooth, which I chipped on a nuclear submarine in the bottom of the box, throwing part of the cereal to the birds in the snow, necessitating antibiotics, and the cost of packing, shipping, and crating it through three moves.
    Eventually we polished off every box, only to be confronted with the most important decision we had ever made as a family: the selection of a new box of cereal.
    I personally favored Bran Brittles because they made you regular and offered an African violet as a premium.
    One child wanted Chock Full of Soggies because they turned your teeth purple.
    Another wanted Jungle Jollies because they had no nutritional value whatsoever.
    We must have spent twenty minutes in the cereal aisle before we decided on Mangled Wheat Bits because “when eaten as an after-school snack, will give you X-Ray vision.”
    Since the children were grown, we were still under the spell of the hard sell. I had gotten used to buying them Christmas presents that (a) I couldn't spell, (b) had no idea what they were used for, and (c) leaked grease.
    Since they were older, their letters at Christmas were a far cry from Christmas past when they wrote “Dear Santa: Please leave me a new doll and a bike.”
    Mesmerized by some commercial, I would get a list from them that spelled out their desire right down to the catalogue number.
    “An RF-60 FM stereo wireless radio chamber. Ask for Frank; five percent off list price if you pay cash.”
    Or “273 auto thyristor bounce flash 9-90 with head tilt for the big gift and for the stocking stuffer a couple of rolls of EX 135-30 Ektachrome ASA 64-19.”
    I didn't think too much about Fear of Buying until one night after I had lugged in twelve bags of groceries (while everyone else hid out in the John) and my husband poked through the bags and said, “What are we having for dinner? A pot of mums, a room deodorizer, a bag of charcoal, or an encyclopedia?”
    That tore it. I slammed down the bag and said, “Is that the thanks I get for taking care of this family's needs? It's a jungle out there and I go into it every week . . . inexperienced people driving shopping carts, kids throwing things into your basket, coupons to clip, lists to juggle, labels to read, fruits to pinch, toilet paper to squeeze, sales to find—and as for the encyclopedias, YOU try to find the S's! Oh sure, the A to Al was a piece of cake . . . fifty-nine cents each, five thousand of them