Growing up, I knew that it was bad to spend money and sinful to buy things at full price
Anything up to $19.99 was okay. Four shirts for $14.99 each? Sure. But one at $24.99? No. That was not a “good deal.” The shirt stayed on the rack.
My mother never needed nice things, and neither did her mother, nor, probably, her mother before her. Nice things were unimportant and frivolous. Besides, we didn’t deserve them. Growing up, I knew that it was bad to spend money and sinful to buy things at full price.
Each time we went back to Marshalls, I checked to see if “my” shirt had gone on sale, or if my mother had changed her mind. It hadn’t, she didn’t, and I never got to own that blouse.
My mother’s family celebrated bargains. I think my mother may have been secretly trying to win her family competition of buying the most while spending the least. She craved that high of finding a good buy, slowing down at every garage sale and cheap downtown store.
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