Decisions, indecisions

Whenever the Hero and I are facing a large purchase -- some electronic gizmo, a new car, or an island somewhere in the Pacific (not really, but wouldn't that be nice?) -- we find ourselves hampered by an innate flaw: the inability to spend large amounts of money quickly. 

It is not necessarily an inability to part with money -- I in particular am quite skilled at that, and the Hero is making progress -- but we cannot do so without commencing a long, complicated process. In some cases, by the time we have finally decided to commit, the item in question is no longer on the market.

If ever we were to acquire a substantial sum of money in some nefarious manner, and had to get it off our hands in a hurry, we would be doomed. The authorities pursuing us for our crime would quickly catch up with us in the digital camera section at Best Buy and arrest us before we'd had a chance to decide on a purchase. "What do you think?" the Hero would shout to me as we are both led away in handcuffs. "Optical zoom? digital zoom?" 

"I don't know!" I would yell back. "Do you think we need full HD video?"

We estimate that we have spent a collective 23 years researching various items. Sometimes our inability to commit monetarily in a timely manner extends to smaller purchases as well. We admit, for example, that the slow cooker probably was researched as much, if not more, than the new car that was purchased around the same time. The research appears to have paid off: Unlike the car, the slow cooker does not wake us up in the middle of the night with a shrill alarm, nor does it attempt to hold us hostage by refusing to release the keys from the ignition. 

We are now facing the necessity of buying a new car for me. Actually, we have been facing this for a couple of years now. The car still goes, so we keep putting off that decision just a little bit longer. The car, however, is giving us hints that it is not interested in going for much longer. The exhaust system is deteriorating. The car does not like to start in cold weather. It does not like me to poke around in the keyhole with the keys in cold weather. The car is saying, "Look, I'm old. I'm ready to retire and move to Florida, hang out in the sun, go to the beach, you know. It's time for us both to move on."

So far I have been impervious to all the car's efforts to retire, begging it to hang in there for just one more season. But lately it has brought out the one weapon --besides not starting at all -- that it knows will bring me down.

"Time to look for a new car," I said to the Hero. "The CD player only works above 50 degrees."

And so, if we don't spend some money quickly, I might be seen commuting in a Go-Kart. Except it would take us just as long to decide on a Go-Kart as it would on a car.