Happiness Sold Separately
My Lifelong Struggle with Consumerism
I was a marketer’s dream child. A yearning consumer practically from birth, I was just waiting to be told what I needed to acquire in order to feel whole.
“But Mama!” I have vague memories of my pleas, but she’s told me the story, laughing. After seeing a commercial for a toy on which I pinned my tender hopes, I would run to her and wail, “It’s SOLD SEPARATELY!”
I was a toddler, too young to understand the words, but they sounded significant and were tacked on in whispered tones at the end of the vibrant and loud television commercials. They seemed to confer value on whatever plastic product (and accessories, sold separately) that were being hawked during cartoons.
By the time I was 5, my favorite place was the mall. Any mall. Sometimes we’d drive to Dallas from our small Texas town and hit a few malls in one day. Outside, the weather was always horrible and swarming with insects. But inside…oh, inside.
Today I avoid malls and haven’t been inside one in several years. But I can still summon that swell of mall-excitement that was, during my formative years, my primary distraction from soul-deep sadness.
