When you’re entitled to buy toy pumpkin… a

THE LAST time I went shopping for groceries, the check-out lady asked breezily: “Would you like a sticker, sir?” At my age my hearing is becoming a little fuzzy and I thought she had offered me a tickle, so I accepted happily and was surprised to be offered a tiny scrap of paper instead.

Research among my younger friends (by now almost all my friends are younger) revealed I was supposed to collect these stickers and paste them on to a card as reward for being a good customer, rather like getting a gold star from my primary school teacher.

Every time I spend R200 or more, I can get another sticker. When my card is full, I am entitled to buy an expensive toy pumpkin.

This is apparently a bargain, although I have not worked out exactly why. As I understand the transaction, I am required to collect 20 stickers (by spending more than R4 000). I will then be allowed to buy a toy vegetable.

As a pensioner, I have very little use for toy vegetables in my life. I have managed well for more than three-quarters of a century without a single toy vegetable. I am told, however, that they are in great demand among younger shoppers, so I am dutifully collecting stickers for my younger friends.

At another store where I sometimes spend my money, I was also offered a sticker and a card on to which to stick it, but this time the bargain was the opportunity to buy a kitchen knife once I had spend my R4 000.

It was not a free knife. I would be allowed to pay for it once I had already spent a lot of money. I had a brief vision of hundreds of hungry housewives buying mountains of vegetables and unable to use them until they had spent R4 000 to buy a knife to chop them up.

“Here you are, Darling. Just munch on this pumpkin. By next week we will have bought enough pumpkins to allow us to buy a knife to cut them up so we can cook them.”

As I grow older, the world becomes increasingly puzzling. I was reading a list of new books on offer from a local bookshop and came across one offering “Exciting New Ways of Using Your Fidget Spinner”.

I felt I must have had a deprived childhood – just think of all those wasted years without a single toy pumpkin and no knowledge of creative fidget spinning. Life is so rich for modern children.

Last Laugh

A LITTLE boy was standing on tiptoe at the front door of a smart suburban house, trying to reach up to the doorbell. A kindly old lady saw him and came across and asked him: “Would you like me to ring the doorbell for you, laddie?”

“Yes, please, Auntie,” he said. The woman pressed the bell and said: “Now what? “

“I don’t know about you, Auntie,” the boy replied, “but I’m going to run like hell.”