You know you’ve been shopping too much online when the delivery guys from DHL and FedEx know your name, and when you know theirs. I realized that today, after I greeted Mario from DHL when he gave me a couple of packages. His comment was “I’m sorry I called you on your phone before getting here, but I wanted to make sure you were home and I know once I am outside your house I tend to lose my cell phone coverage, so I’d rather call ahead of time.” Yikes. He’s getting too familiar with my surroundings. Shopaholic much?
I’d like to say I have an excuse, since I am throwing my daughter a birthday party this Saturday and father’s day is just around the corner, but let’s be honest, there’s always an excuse.
I remember when I was a young and beautiful creature – not so long ago, since I am still an astonishingly pretty young woman, or so I wish to believe – I watched that Sandra Bullock movie called “The Net” and I was absolutely taken by its premise: the woman had never been seen by her employers or co-workers and most of the people she dealt with on a daily basis didn’t know anything at all about her, except for the fact that she was a woman, because she had a female name, of course.
Imagine however how the situation would be for me, since my name does not give away my gender. Literally. Many people address me as Mr. Yits Jimenez, and I have been exposing my case for too long, so by now I don’t even bother correcting them. I just take it like a man. Lol.
But I found the idea of living secluded in my own house somehow creepy and enticing at the same time. I mean, I could die and nobody would notice it right away, but I could work wearing nothing but underpants and a t-shirt. So… you know. You put things in a balance and get a little help from technology and our modern marketing standards and practices and here I am. Spending most of my days inside my house, ordering my office supplies from Office Depot online, getting my groceries from Superama and getting all sorts of stupid and beautiful trinkets from Amazon and Mercado Libre. Oh, by the way, if you read my entry about the tree I bought online a couple of months ago, you’ll be glad to know it is now getting stronger and leafy, but since the raining season hasn’t started yet, I haven’t been able to let go of it and I am still babying it until nature helps it get by on its own.
I mean, I don’t go that crazy and buy just about anything I want. I wish. I would probably spend my money on toys, makeup, jewelry and stupid novelties – I love those, specially the ones that are not commonly found at real stores.
However, I basically buy things I need to keep my family alive and to keep my business going. But considering I pay for most of my services online, if I could get online kindergarten classes for my daughter I would never have to leave my house. I would have officially become Sandra Bullock’s character minus the espionage and the programming craze. Seriously, what was that movie about? I can hardly remember.
I have always told this story about my childhood expectations: when I was just a girl and Miami Vice and other similar TV shows depicted the luxurious lifestyle of the 80’s in the US, I dreamt of having a portable telephone in my car. I remember asking my father if having a car phone was too expensive. The answer was affirmative and deep in my heart I knew I had to make a lot of money to have one of those devices. Really? It is a story to laugh your ass off, ironically because nowadays once I am done using my cell phone that’s usually the place where I keep it – my ass (or the back pocket of my jeans, to be precise. I am not that weird).
Technology has changed our lives, not only regarding our commercial habits, although that’s a big part of it, because that has literally changed the way I live and leave my house, and apparently the movies and the TV shows of my childhood didn’t really have an accurate idea of how cool the future would be for us thanks to technology. Perhaps something interesting would be to try and compare our future, I don’t know, 15 or 20 years from now, to the ideas of shows like Black Mirror, although it would be incredibly frightening to discover they were right, wouldn’t it?
