This morning I woke up feeling like crap. Inexplicably confused about the time change, I left for work too early, so I stopped at Rite Aid, across from my office in search of an over-the-counter remedy for what ailed me: malaise, hazy-head, ennui. I roamed through the aisles and eventually did find that antidote, just not on the shelves. See, I had not set foot in a “store” in a dog’s age. Yes, I had succumbed to buying cat food and tube socks on the internet. The 5 minutes spent in a brick and mortar – albeit chain – store, and the subsequent interactions with employees – “how are you this morning”? “that’s a lot of Cool Whip and sugar free Jello”! – was all I really needed to make me feel well again. I like people (the nice ones – you know, the ones that usually work in stores) and I am probably the person most susceptible to little teensy acts of kindness. Telecommuting, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms, virtual town meetings, okay, but “shopping” was once fun! A pleasurable experience all its own, that you did with a girlfriend, or your mom, or your poor beleaguered brother, with it’s touchable sales racks, ingratiating sales people, cozy dressing rooms. Online shopping isolates us from one another in a city that already does that. I mean online chatting and texting have not replaced meeting pals for coffee or dinner, or watching a movie or going to concerts. While the internet is seductive with its icons of knowledge and power, tiny aspects of “life” via benign human interactions are quietly, relentlessly devalued and this nonplace is causing us to surrender our time on earth, more alone than ever. Even though I know it is a dissipating reality, in the time in which it takes the bull dozers to level the mini malls and shortsighted lunatics to throw up more Tuscan condos, I will stand up and walk out the door to “stores”. And as God as my witness, I will never buy tube socks on Amazon again.