Whenever I’m on a plane, I can’t help but look through SkyMall magazine. Not because I’m interested in shopping. For me, it’s a somewhat grown up version of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
Page after page, the products get more and more outrageous. A personalized barbeque branding iron, only $79.99. Get your own canine genealogy kit, $59.99. Truck antlers, just $24.99. Or the advertisement that really made me laugh, the reversible top holiday table, which measures a little more than two feet wide, that “seats four adults comfortably.”
Four adult whats?
It reminds me of the old-time carnival barkers, beckoning onlookers to “discover the mysteries of the East” or “behold the incredible two-headed frog.” For a couple bucks you’d discover that the mysteries of the East amounted to a dragon-shaped spice rack, and if you looked closely through the murky water in the gallon jar, you could count the stitches on the incredible “two-headed” frog.
So who falls for this stuff nowadays? Are we still part of the gullible generation? I for one wouldn’t want to eat a steak with my initials on it. I don’t care about my dog’s lineage; I prefer paper-trained over paper work. Truck antlers? Don’t they have to be in season?
Then again, as I sit wedged in increasing discomfort between two strangers on a flight that’s barely halfway between Omaha and Atlanta, that holiday table is starting to look damn roomy.
If only I could reach my wallet.
