choices

There are too many choices these days. Whether it's buying a car or an antacid how do we make up our minds as to which product to buy? When I was a kid there was a good variety of soda pop to choose from: Coke, Pepsi, RC, Orange Crush, Dr Pepper, etc. Now, how do you choose which Coke product to buy? You have Classic Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine Free, Vanilla Coke. You may even be able to buy a Diet, Caffeine Free, Vanilla Coke.

I think having a huge variety of choices is a marketing ploy directed toward women. (I know, I'm treading on dangerous ground here.) Let's take shampoo for instance. If I go to the store for shampoo (Come to think of it, I've never done that) I will go directly to the shampoo section, pick up a bottle that has the word shampoo on the label, pay for it and bring it home. Dorothy will stand there and deliberate and read labels for what seems like a long time in order to get the perfect shampoo. It has to add body (what's that?). On the front of her shampoo bottle it describes itself as a lightweight formula that boosts hair with volume and body. Wow! I never knew that. It contains amino proteins and a lot of other unpronounceable ingredients, but no Jojoba. There's a shampoo for every scalp condition and type of hair. Of course, I may have chosen the wrong example seeing as how I don't have much hair.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that as I get older I value simplicity. I know the younger generation revels in the multiplicity of car models to choose from, a myriad of electronic devices to serve every need, and a mind boggling list of chain restaurants, each with a menu that takes twenty minutes to read and consider all the entrees. The life we live in modern times is fast paced and when presented with so many choices my baby boomer brain tends to freeze up like my computer when it is asked to run too many programs at once. I think I'll have some Ctrl, Alt, Delete buttons installed in the back of my head so that Dorothy can reboot me whenever she finds me frozen in place, staring off into space, trying to decide which deodorant to buy.