I am an online shopper. Of course I still shop local when I can, but I will admit that when it comes to the holiday shopping season, the majority of my gifts are, indeed, from online sources. To expand my online shopping skills assessment even further, I will also confidently declare that I am a very good online shopper, frequently securing great sale pricing and free shipping well BEFORE Cyber Monday! However, I SHOULD be good at online shopping because I have had a LONG time to practice…
I began shopping online for Christmas gifts back in 1997. In 1997 I did not know about or have access to Amazon Prime. Rather, I began online shopping by utilizing department store websites. In 1997, I had a 2 year-old with special needs and 1 year-old with a limited tolerance for cooperating ;-). Finding a period of time wherein they were both not sick and amenable to a 3-4 hour outing was challenging. In addition, although I could appreciate the accessibility of a large shopping mall, pushing a wheelchair and a stroller, at the same time, was hard. Nevertheless, I needed Christmas gifts and to the mall I went with my girls… Any parent who remembers what it was like to go out with two small kids will be able to fill in the dot dot dots with their own memories of what the trip to the mall was like (sweating/carrying a baby while pushing a stroller filled with bags/searching desperately for a coffee stand/more sweating/stopping to change a diaper/stopping to wash a dropped toy/retracing steps to retrieve a forgotten blanket or mitten or shoe or wallet…)
It was during this joyful outing that a department store clerk informed me that although they were out of a particular item, I could simply go on to their internet website and place an order and they would deliver it to my doorstep, free of charge! I think I responded (as the angels were joyfully singing in my head) “You can do that?” And with a nod of her head and a big grin on her face, she responded with three words that forever changed my holiday shopping routine, “Yes we can.”
I am convinced that the online shopping pervasiveness of today originated from people like me back in the mid to late 1990s. See, I wasn’t elderly or sickly or without a means of getting to a mall. I was young and energetic and had a car. But, I also had a credit card and a computer and dial-up internet. Most importantly, shopping on my computer in a quiet house while my kids slept at night was SO MUCH easier, more fun and far more productive as I could purchase (and see) what was actually available. And although back then it took quite a bit longer to make an online purchase in comparison to the one-click I rely on today, I will forever appreciate how the discovery of online shopping brought the joy of holiday gift giving back to my heart.
Registered Customer. Registered Customer.   
Kathy Naumann, possessor of NATURALLY curly hair and the understanding that you can’t control everything!

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