i am only slightly embarrassed to admit this: i love 'em. in a lot of cases, i'd just as soon skip the site-seeing and go straight to the shop instead.
as a kid, we took some pretty nice vacations. and all of them - or at least almost all of them - had an educational basis. we'd go to places like gettysburg and washington, d.c. and williamsburg and to forts and museums and big mansions like the vanderbilt one and all kinds of places where i was supposed to learn something. and i did. i learned how to scope out gift shops like it was my job. (which, frankly, i always kinda thought it would be fun to work in one.)
the problem was, my parents loathed those kinds of shops. they did everything in their power to avoid them and i always felt like a second class citizen because i liked them. i also had to get creative about getting them to go into one - things like timing my need to go to the bathroom just as we were strolling by the gift shop.
i'm not sure what it is about souvenir shops that i like so much. i recognize that most (all) of the stuff is junk, but i guess i like to pretend that either it's not junk or, if it is, that i'm not above being in the company of something that others think is junk but for some folks, this is how they proudly decorate their homes. and i should be empathetic to that. maybe those tacky gift shops were my first exposure to wanting to be a social worker.
i guess what's making me think about souvenir and gift shops today is because in a few minutes, i'm gonna meet my parents at a restaurant about a half hour from here and the restaurant has a gift shop (albeit an upscale one). whenever my parents and i meet at this restaurant, i make a point of getting there before they do - so i can browse around and not feel like i have to apologize for it.
speaking of restaurants, i remember one on longboat key, florida. that was one of the few vacations we took that didn't include a bunch of schlepping around, learning something.
the restaurant - a seafood one, of course - had a gift shop. somehow, that particular time, my parents were pretty willing to go in it and kill a few minutes. i found one of those snow globe thingies only this one was just filled with blue water and it had fake fish swimming around in it. i asked them if they would buy it for me. and guess what........they did. i have never repaid them for that wonderful favor.
today at the restaurant might be the day i do.
:)
