Blondie Buys a Hat

When I was young I liked to read Blondie the comic strip and my favorite episodes was when she went shopping.  Back in the day, when she would get upset Blondie would go shopping for a hat and it became a catch phrase for ladies when they went shopping.  These days when I want to take a spin into the city if I bring my mother along I tell her that  “I’m going to buy a hat” which is code for “don’t bother me, I want to buy something even if it’s a knickknack”.

      As part of this philosophy of shopping I wanted to find a picture of Blondie buying the hat but would you believe it, not a single google image of Blondie with a hatbox!  In my search I ended up reading the whole story of Blondie’s evolution which was very fascinating.  Did you know the comic strip started in 1930 and that Blondie was originally a flapper girl? Dagwood was the son of a wealthy industrialist who was disowned when he married Blondie.  Also after Blondie got married she became the background figure to Dagwood’s antics which doesn’t say much for the institution of marriage within the comic world at least. 

      But while the blog may sometimes ramble like Jeffie in Family Circus I do come back to the main point, shopping.  There are different types of shopping.  There’s the domestic shopping when the only mission is to buy groceries and household cleaning products.  Then there is the blended shopping where groceries mix with other domestic essentials like vacuum bags, kitty litter which results in roaming throughout the Walmart and one may get distracted in the video, book, makeup or linen departments.  The third type of shopping is when one needs to do the manly chores which can also be blended with the groceries and domestic essentials.  This entails going to Canadian Tire, Home Hardware or Home Depot and looking at hammers, lawnmowers, dohickies and the like.  Yesterday I had to look for 16 foot corners which baffled me.  I called up my brother to ask what he meant by that and how did they fold so they would fit in my car?  Clarity came when he said he needed 16 feet but they came in 8 foot lengths.  Oh, why didn’t he write down 2 – 8 foot lengths?  Because I was a dummy who didn’t understand anything, that’s why. 

After that type of conversation the final and best type of shopping is Retail Therapy.  That’s when a woman can go shopping for a hat, or a dress, or a purse, or shoes, or a knick knack or whatever the heck she likes.  Utterly therapeutic even if it is only window shopping.  Believe it or not, a woman can actually go window shopping without ever buying anything.  It’s rare, but it is possible.  But Retail Therapy is at it’s best when a woman can come home with a bundle of packages that feel utterly satisfying.  To her.