Do You Think I Hate Target? The Answer Might Surprise You!

IT OCCURS TO ME, from what you’ve read here, that you must think I hate Target.

I’ve complained – legitimately, I might add – about the ridiculously stingy amount of contact lens rewetting solution they sell in tiny, frustratingly hard-to-squeeze bottles.

More famously, I’ve been the lone voice of indignancy, a word I think I just coined, trying to whip the public into a frenzy over a potential* 2011 Halloween public relations nightmare – an offensive “Indian” (their word, not mine) costume, which does nothing but perpetuate the disgusting stereotype of Native Americans as vicious, violent warriors (and frankly, if I were of redskin heritage myself, I’d be on the warpath). Yet Target has managed  to sidestep any bad publicity over this one by distracting the costume-buying public’s attention with some completely different, wholly manufactured “scandal” that I unfortunately did not come up with.
*There’s still time!

So, sure, you’d be forgiven if you thought I hate Target – but I don’t.  And here’s why:  They actually have some inexpensive groceries.  Take for instance this peanut butter they used to sell.

It was $2.19 (cheap!) and came in a glass jar, and if you’re anything like my grandfather was, and you are, probably, you know glass jars are excellent for use in the garage for your miscellaneous nuts and bolts, your washers and what have you, kept conveniently out of the way because you nailed the lids to the bottom of a shelf, thank you Roy Doty and his marvelous Wordless Workshop!

Anyway, it was the old-fashioned kind of peanut butter, it was – the kind with all that rich, nourishing oil on the top that if you were lucky enough to be around when she opened the jar, Mom would pour into a Dixie riddle cup for you to nurse on while you watched 3-2-1- Contact.  Well, you can just forget about that peanut butter, because they stopped selling it a few months ago and if anything, that should give us yet another reason to hate Target, but I don’t, and now neither should you.

Why? Because unlike Ralphs and Vons and Safeway and Kroger and First National and IGA, Target’s frozen vegetables still come in 1-pound bags and are reasonably priced. Meanwhile, Big Grocery sells them in measly 10 or 12 ounce bags but charges more for them. Yet who can blame them, really – the unions have those goddamn grocery stores by the balls!

Plus at Tarzshay, as you insist on calling it (clever, once, about thirty years ago), you can sneak a can of Spaghettios into one of the dressing rooms and feast on a quick lunch while trying on t-shirts with 70s and 80s “retro” images on them. Bring your own spoon, or just scoop ’em out of the can with your fingers like I do. Then come back next week and check the clearance rack for that “Mr. Turtle / Tootsie Pop” ringer tee, marked down to $4.28 from $12.99 just because of a few little tomato sauce stains.

Posted by Ted on October 24, 2011, 9:00 AM.