Opinion : The simple solution to speeding up last-minute holiday shopping

Every once in a while, you get a glimpse of society that gives you at least a bit of a clue as to how America deteriorated from the Europe-saving, car-and airplane-inventing military and economic champion of the 20th Century to our current condition as the overweight, under-employed international brother-in-law who won’t get off the couch on Christmas to fill his own plate.

I saw such a picture during a Christmas shopping season a few years ago.

Two days before Christmas, I had to travel to Cedar Rapids to pick up a present for the kids that wasn’t available locally.

I figured if I got there before the 3:30 or so get-home-from-work traffic rush, the streets would be relatively-traffic free.

Silly me.

Apparently, every procrastinating brother-in-law, and a few sisters-in-law, decided that it was time, on Dec. 23, to start their holiday shopping.

And every single one of them, it seems, decided to begin at the same place to which I was heading.

So while the trip into Cedar Rapids was uneventfully unencumbered with slowpokes, I immediately faced a logjam of them on Collins Road.

I headed to the department store to pick up the pool table I had bought with the credit card one banker had told me I should have used more often to raise my credit score, and another had told me not to use because it would lower my credit score.

But before I could get to the department store, find the right place to park my old truck to wait for the slowpokes there to spend 30 minutes looking for a pool table (How hard can it be to find one of those?), I had to spend about 30 minutes driving three miles from the interstate to the store.

This irritation was compounded by the fact that my truck does not have power brakes (yes, it is that old), so by the time I got to the store, I had arthritis, tendonitis and several other conditions that are only treatable by anti-pain medications that cause heart attacks.

The least slow way to the store was through the mall parking lot, and I was astonished as I watched people leaving the mall — most of them left empty-handed.

I interrupted my grumbling about the traffic to ponder what kind of incompetence would lead someone to drive through this traffic to wade through a crowded mall — for nothing.

I thought for a while that Christmas might arrive at my house before I did, but I finally made it to the store, where there is a clock that shows the bosses how quickly the staff can deliver items 50 feet from the storage room to my truck outside the door. They stopped the clock on my order at 4 minutes 55 seconds, indicating my delivery was “complete” in that time. Then, 30 minutes later, they brought out the pool table.

My next — and last — stop was a local discount store, where an even greater population density of even slower slowpokes was meandering through the store. Many of these people stopped in the middle of an aisle, blocking it entirely with an empty cart to look at yet another item they were not going to buy.

One of the items I bought there was a pool cue, and if I was seen smiling while wading through this treacherous mob, it was because I was imagining a more-perfect world where it was legal, and even encouraged, to use pool cues (safely, of course) to motivate and move slowpokes.

“Prod. Poke. Whack,” is what I was thinking until I came across an even better idea.

A very exhausted-looking middle age woman and a very scary-looking teenager with black lips and purple hair were making their way toward the make-up aisle when I saw the teenager’s face.

On both her nose and her upper lip were the biggest facial rings I have ever seen.

Each ring was an inch in diameter, and more interestingly, about an inch in width.

Then it occurred to me:That teenager was not wearing jewelry; she was wearing handles installed by her mother to get her to move more quickly through the store.

At last, I thought, someone has found a solution to surviving in a society of slowpokes.

So before you try any last-minute shopping this year, I encourage all of you to head to the jewelry counter of your favorite store — preferably a local one — to purchase the biggest, widest, gaudiest, ugliest nose and lip handles available.

Then give it to a person who has spent too many hours in a store full of slowpokes. I guarantee you they will appreciate the gift more than any other.