When I was a child in Tara I picked my school clothes for the year out of the Sears catalogue. I was tall so I fit lengthwise into adult clothes but widthwise I was drowning in poly-blends.

There was no official Sears outlet in Tara, so we’d pick up my outfits in the back of Eagleson’s Funeral parlour. I’d tiptoe past coffins to the back desk and snatch up my parcels—racing out loathing what I imagined was the smell of the dead.

I couldn’t even picture malls.

I never in my most fantastic Barbie-plastic-sniffing induced hazes ever envisioned the Internets.

This weekend I found a new housing tenant, had a Parisian fellow shovel my snow and sold my Remington Steele car—all online.

My tenant is a charming newcomer to Toronto and its film production business.

My snow shoveler, who goes by the handle “Bo Derek” did not arrive with ice-pick in hand for the money I’d pay. No. He wanted to shovel Canadian snow before he returned to Paris, for the story it would give him. He shoveled with verve and glee. I begged him to reconsider his nationality. This winter no one has any verve for that bitch Mother Nature.

My car, the same make and model that Laura Holt drove in ’80s detective drama Remington Steele (aka televisual panacea), was fought over by fellow VW enthusiasts.

On post Internet-bliss days like these I need to remember Tara and the thick Sears catalogue I’d have to read laying down on the gold-shag carpet because it hurt to hold up. I want to appreciate always how much more time I have for fashion and fun because I don’t have to traipse through coffin galleries to get what I want.

I do still love Sears. Vintage Sears.

So, while the investment banks and securities companies know the government has their back (so long as the US feds don’t know what else to do about the Bush/Hoover economic catastrophe)—I’ve got the little old Internets.

And we’ll both be around a lot longer than any of those old farts.

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Posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 9:29 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.