Earlier today I was buying some regrettably expensive sunglasses at Macy’s at the Beverly Center, and I asked the sales girl to just let me wear them out and to forget the imitation leather case and the cleaning cloth and the plastic carrying bag and the receipt even. I just wanted the glasses.

“Are you sure?,” she said. “Because you’ll need the receipt if you want to return them.”

“I won’t. They’re just sunglasses.”

“You’d be surprised how many people come back and want to return or exchange,” she explained.

“What do they say when they do that?,” I asked. “What…’excuse me but these sunglasses that I bought yesterday don’t seem to be working out’?”

“I’m just saying, people change their minds,” she said.

“It’s like returning a handkerchief. ‘Excuse me but I bought this handkerchief yesterday and I blew my nose last night and it doesn’t seem to be functioning correctly so I need to return it.’ Or ‘excuse me but I bought this T-shirt yesterday and wore it during a date with this girl I just met and we went to a couple of bars and I don’t know…the T-shirt just isn’t working out. I’d like to exchange it for another.'”

People are so impulslve, compulsive, lame, scattered. Waddling around in their little fantasy-whim bubbles. They buy stuff without thinking and the next day they’re Marie Antoinette. “Eeeewww, Louis…this rack of lamb doesn’t taste right,” etc.