After the Fact: Tickle the dragon

Every year brings a new and different catalog (plus all of those that have threatened “This May Be Your Last” for years). My mom was a catalog queen. It started with the big Spiegel catalog, and, after she’d ordered the first time, it was briskly followed by “Monkey Ward” and Sears. Micki and I pooled our allowances for Christmas shopping at the local “five and dime” for many years but, once I’d moved to Ft. Collins and she was going to nursing school in Iowa, we were faced with “going solo.” Until mom’s catalogs were mentioned in one of our weekly phone calls. Thus began the annual flood of catalogs and packages to our mailboxes over the years. You’d be amazed at the things you can buy from a catalog! 

Now, I get catalogs for every season and every holiday; some are specialized but others simply change things around a little bit and re-write the description. One company sells a fall wreath for the door that is transformed into a Christmas wreath by the next catalog and changes again before Easter. And, of course, many catalogs duplicate, down to the exact cost, items that appear elsewhere. It sure makes shopping at the Church of the Nazarene Thrift Store in Monte Vista more fun and, frequently, less expensive.

Novelty t-shirts are frequent flyers in these catalogs and only some are acceptable to be worn at school. Nevertheless, the “art of the hoodie” is featured in the school supply catalogs. If nothing else, reading the sayings on the year’s t-shirt offerings is good for a laugh. One that just tickled my fancy said “Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.”

I grew up in a town where, by the time we were in a high school physics class, we knew about the hazards of “tickling the tail of a dragon.” It referenced the neutron-reflection experiments that, ultimately, sparked a lot more caution while the dragon appeared to be asleep. I suspect the market for a t-shirt about dragon tail-tickling would be pretty slim anymore but I’d buy a couple for some friends. Or maybe not. Their wives might think it pertained to them (and I suspect a couple of them might be right).

After a few disappointments, I learned to read the entire description provided for something of interest in a catalog: what looks like a bookcase large enough to hold an entire set of encyclopedia may, in fact, be so small that you couldn’t even use it for a spoon collection. Larger items may arrive unassembled and I think I’ve already exhausted my thoughts on that subject. One catalog is famous for selling in quantities that could provide for the entire population of a middle-sized country.

When you’re ordering, you might also want to check the return policy and will they send the missing screw/nut/bolt/washer/battery/whatever that didn’t come with the item?  There are only a couple of places in the entire Valley where you can buy a pair of shoes or boots but it’s almost worth a trip to Pueblo before ordering “out” if you’re desperate. 

Somehow, I don’t think my mom ever had the problems with mail order that I’ve had and a whole lot of our school wardrobes came from Spiegel: at that time, it was the “bargain” store of the catalog business. I don’t know who, of the “big business” catalog stores, is still filling mailboxes. The only outhouse-size book I get nowadays comes from an art materials supplier and they send it one time during the year with “supplements” for special occasions.

Nowadays, if you want to “tickle the dragon,” sit down with a bunch of catalogs and start your Christmas ordering early. Very early. That way, you can return the items in time for a refund that you can take to a local merchant who’ll help you find what you really wanted in the first place.