Confessions of a Tightwad

(I am NOT Scrooge! Really! :-) Recently a new "dollar store" opened in America's Third World County™. Man! Is it ever busy with Christmas shoppers! Just about every tightwad in America's Third World County™ can be found there completing their Christmas shopping. Including me. Of course, most of the stuff is "made by slave labor in China (or some other such place)" in frank imitation of name brand products ("Nelson chocolate" could fool some folks' eyes... )... just not as well. Other stuff is perfectly fine for the uses one needs it for. I got a set of seives for my kitchen and some funnels. $1 per set. Perfectly good. Other stuff... Let me put it to you this way. You know that neighbor who borrows tools but never quite gets around to returning them? Now, I can afford a rather complete set of hand tools (a buch apiece--sometimes a buck for a small set of tools) that I can loan to such persons... preserving the good wrenches, sockets, etc., for my own use. (Hey! if a $4 socket or a $20 wrench goes missing, it adds up, especially as against a couple of bucks for a socket set and a wrench... heh) Heck, if you could shop here, Christmas presents for inlaws would be a snap. Of course, nothing could match the Christmas present I gave a really crappy boss one year. Snooty as all get out-he and his wife both. Soooo proud of their good (and expensive) taste in decorating. (Yeh, right. Over-the-top Thomas Kincaidish kitsch home at MUCH higher than Kincaid prices.) I took a Christmas card I'd gotten as an advertizing promo from my insurance agent (knowing his agent was with another company, in another town, etc.), trimmed the front, framed it in a junk frame I had sitting around in stuff my parents had dumped off on me in a "we don't have room to move this" gesture. Saw it prominently displayed in their entry on several later "come on by so we can brag on our gauche taste" visits to their home. Warmed the cockles of this tightwad's heart, it surely did. Openly confessed (after much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth) at Peakah's Provocations, Basil's for Brunch, Sunday Specials at Jo's Cafe.