I like to keep my inboxes relatively clear. Otherwise, they become online storage rooms, kind of like the spare room in the house, where stuff steadily accumulates.
Stuff like a used cardboard box that’s in good shape and that I know I’ll need as soon as it’s torn into pieces and chucked in the blue bin the city picks up every other Monday. There are mementoes, like the last of the hundreds of small rugs my grandmother sewed from scraps of muumuu fabric, and artifacts, like a first-generation Macintosh desktop.
And books, hundreds of them. Some are stacked very library-like, filed tightly one next to the other, titles out and easily read. Many more, dog-eared and spines cracked, teeter in triple-deep, towering piles across wire racks.
Below them are bins and tins with who-knows-what in them, though at one time or the other, I’m sure the items were desirable, things I thought I couldn’t or wouldn’t live without.
But ’tis the season of maniacal acquisition, and emails exhorting me to buy more stuff for potential storage-room occupation flash persistently into the inboxes three, four or more times a day, wearing out the “delete” key and requiring tedious “unsubscribe” procedures.
Being an anti-social media type with a dumbphone that merely makes calls, I am not subject to advertising via tweets, if there is such a thing.
Still, the pitches are inescapable. Actors revive television personas to hawk e-readers while other celebrities traffic in watches, cotton dresses and handbags that cost as much as three months’ salary before taxes. Even dearly departed movie stars, specifically Elizabeth Taylor, are resuscitated in filmy ads for products.
I realize that consumers make the world go round. The livelihoods of so many people rely on buying and selling, and, in my case, telling others to buy. It’s just that no event, holiday or observance is immune, even when pitches are inappropriate, such as Memorial Day mattress sales.
What’s more, the language of appeals are deceptive and make people buy more than they need. A low, low price persuades shoppers to pick up marginal items, offers of “free gifts” for purchases over $150 stimulate overspending.
It’s not that I don’t like to give gifts because thoughtful giving represents caring, and gift exchanges allow people an opportunity — if for only one time a year — to display affection. Watching a child’s delight as he opens a wished-for box of Legos is one of the best scenes the holiday can bring.
In a few years, however, that colorful set of interlocking blocks will be set aside in a spare bedroom or a hall closet or on a garage shelf. Hopefully, the plastic pieces will fall apart far sooner than the memory of the joy they brought dims.
