Retail Avarice

What is it about the Home Depot? Is there a pheremone that they’ve locked on to that causes Y chromosomes to hum like a plucked string?
I’m not much of a handyman, as my wife can tell you, yet today, as I strolled the aisles of our local H.D., I felt a bizarre compunction to buy things coming over me. I had gone for paint and paint supplies so that our baby might not be born into sheer and utter unpainted squalor and had briefly stopped by the Tools section to pick up a pack of sandpaper pads for my orbital sander. Strolling past rows upon rows of power tools, I found myself thinking “Oooh, a planer! I could really, umm, plane stuff. Mmmmmm, Porter Cable air compressor, I could use one of those things. Laser sights and levels on all the Ryobis – neat! Gel-padded handgrips on the Black & Deckers? Who wouldn’t want that?”
I don’t know why I found myself thinking these things. Maybe I watched too much Home Improvement, maybe I secretly dug shop class, or maybe I just really like gadgets. The sad thing is that I emphatically don’t need any of those. I can barely put the ones I have to (good) use and any further purchases would probably sit unused in the basement, probably chatting with each other, each wondering when next they’ll be dragged out for some piddling task that is an insult to their manifold capabilities.
I suppose it’s all for the best, though. One less thing for me to spend money on, after all.