Life of Hardin Vol. VI, No. 3

Something New

The human animal astonishes all those who gaze upon it; and his need always for something new is one of those little eccentricities which make people look at each other (or themselves) and scratch their heads. What is this fascination with having something new?

Marketing gurus understand this urge. At the least, if they don’t understand it, they know how to manipulate it. They put the fancy new products right in the aisles of Wal-Mart and Target, where you can’t help but walk over them. They know that if they have the new line of blenders, of juicers, of automatic coffee makers, off to the side in their proper place, they won’t get noticed and no one will buy them unless they actually need one and go looking.

BUT! . . . But if they dangle them out in front, make you trip right over them, you realize, “I need that new Cuisinart. I am sick and tired of that old one; pushing its old, boring buttons; plugging in its old sticky cord that has six year’s worth of chocolate syrup and peanut butter residue gummed up on it. I need a new one!”

It often does not matter what that new thing is. We get excited anyway, so long as it is new. On Christmas morning, at birthdays, at weddings, we open presents, we complain when we get socks or ties or garlic presses--but we’re still happy that we got something. We opened something new! It was better than opening nothing at all!

Just the other day, I ran out of toothpaste. So I bought two more tubes, on sale for a dollar each (new is even better on sale). When I got home I put them next to the old, almost empty tube. The next morning faced me with one of the most difficult dilemmas of my life. I had this old, worn-out, squeezed down, beat up, crinkly, tube of toothpaste; and this wonderful, shiny, full, smooth, tube of new toothpaste. Joy of joys! Something new! But I still had the old. I stood with the old tube in my left hand, the new tube in my right hand, and faced myself in the mirror. I don’t want this old beat up tube. I want this new tube. It’s New! Eventually my miserliness won out, and I squeezed two more day’s worth of brushing from the old tube. But it was difficult.

Sale papers recognize this phenomenon. Never am I so happy in life as when I miss a Sunday paper and forget that “something I don’t know about but absolutely need” might be on sale today. When I happen to see the paper, I can’t help but pore over the ads. How pitiful I am once I have seen all the new things of which I was unaware, but thence having seen, must have but cannot afford.

Last Sunday my wife carelessly left a JoAnn’s circular on the table. You might as well leave out a loaded gun. My eyes could not turn away. Just look! NEW: Straw Bale or Indian Corn, 9.99 each. My choice! NEW: Cinnamon-Scented Pine Cones. Take me away! NEW: Floss Bobbins. What is it? I don’t know! But I must have it now. NEW: Gaudy purse handle things! Of course I’ll need a new purse to go them. And finally, fifty percent off a NEW Clay Conditioning Machine. Add textures to clay, soft metal sheets, and some design paper. I have not yet lived!

There should be a Betty Ford Clinic for this sort of thing, but there wouldn’t be enough rooms, and everyone would check out once the newness wore off.