Possibly Pathological

I had to trek into stupid Chadstone (shopping centre) this morning to get my laptop looked at by an Apple “genius”, who told me what I already knew, which is that it needs to be repaired (the screen has been playing up). They also told me there is a two to three week turnaround which is less than ideal since I do everything on this machine work-wise.

Getting up at my version of the crack of dawn (7:30am) to take a tram and a bus into the “fashion capital” wasn’t all crap however, since I got to window shop a little, at a time when there weren’t too many gross people around.  Does anyone else feel like their entire lives could be different when they walk through a homewares store?  I browsed through about five of these bizarre havens of whiteness- and I mean white, literally and figuratively, and was simultaneously freaked out and seduced into thinking stuff like: “what my life really needs is a spatula with tiny porcelain sparrows attached to its end”.

Even more scary than the homeware shops, was when I told one of the shop assistants that I had just moved and I was looking to decorate my place entirely in different shades of green.  This is patently untrue in every respect, and as soon as it came out I wondered why the hell I said it.  It was then that I realised I actually do that a lot when I’m shopping: if I’m forced to make small talk with shop assistants, chances are I’ll make stuff up, either to get them to leave me alone, or if they’re nice, to be polite.  This shopping induced lying may have begun with the “what postcode do you live in” question that mall shop assistants love to throw at you.  I pretty much always provide a random 4 digit number starting with a 3, because I object to the fact that someone wants to know, but I don’t want to be rude.   Even though it would just be easier to give them my real postcode, particularly when I look like an idiot if I’m unable to clarify what suburb the top-of-the-head postcode is connected to.

Somehow that has morphed into fake backstories for myself.  I want to state here that I don’t plan it, it just happens.  In fact until this morning, I didn’t even notice I did it.  Past imaginary reasons for browsing or buying things include: “I need to buy a gift for the lesbian lover I don’t have, because we had an argument” (that I was a fake lesbian was crucial to the lie you see), “this would be perfect for my non-existent younger sister”, and even “I can’t buy anything made of tin because I’m allergic to iron-alloys”.  I’m not even sure if the last one is a logical statement to make, but I believe I said it in order to fend off the pushiest shop assistant in the history of pushy shop assistants.  It was also clear to both of us that I was lying since I had touched numerous objects made of tin before I said it.

When it comes down to it though, it’s pretty difficult to rationalise this odd one-sided parody of social niceties I’ve apparently been enacting for ages.  Now I’ve just got to decide if I should purge it out of my system or embrace it.

Also, I’ll be giving up my laptop this Sunday, so I wouldn’t bother emailing/facebooking me for the next couple of weeks.