Even if you don't like to shop per se, most of you (I am speaking to the women now- I trust any male reader at this point has gone back to an unfinished Sodoku, or mowing the lawn. If not, just go ahead, you'll be bored momentarily) know the frustration of seeing what you want in a catalog, and then finding that they're out of it in the size or color you want. Grrrr. And it was just the right thing!
So perhaps you will share the compassion I felt when I struck up a conversation with a nice woman working at the antiques store around the corner (where I ended up finding 8 perfect little port glasses. Have you ever tried to find port glasses in the U.S.? You might as well try to buy a unicorn.) She was wearing a pretty fluffy scarf, and I commented on it. Somehow this little conversational parry turned to the Scarf Unattainable - the woman, Jane, had seen a wonderful, and unique!, scarf on an Ebay-like site, but for the life of her, she couldn't get them to send the product to the UK. I felt her pain - a few weeks before coming to Oxford, I had seen something at a British online store, and when I got to the very end of the transaction, was politely informed that they didn't ship to the U.S. Crapola! Not the end of the world, but frustrating all the same.
So the light bulb went on over my head - I would be heading back to the U.S. in a couple of weeks. Perhaps I could try buying the scarf for her? And then bring it back? (Now mind you, if this woman had seen a $500 watch, I would have felt as much compassion but would not have made this offer. But it was a $30 scarf.) Galvanized by the prospect of helping out a fellow hunter "down" her prey, I hied myself back to our house and hopped online. There it was! The scarf! But the site had its kinks. And the vendor was in China, and communication was a bit choppy. Ebay this was not. But I forged on. (Time to cue the stirring, courage-inspiring music.) Could I do it? Would the transaction go through? Oh the drama, the drama. For a full two days, it wasn't clear if the transaction had gone through at all. I also monitored my credit card activity closely to make sure there wasn't a sudden large bill from a gambling resort in Shanghai. But then - that e-mail that thrills us all: "Your order has shipped!" Did you know that you can track a package's transit all the way from a small town in China? If you didn't before, you do now. (Cue the music for "It's a Small World After All") By this time I was home again, and within a week or so, there it was! The Scarf Attainable! (Now cue the roar of lionesses as they rip into dinner.)
An example of a very young lioness with her prey (such as it is).
As it turns out, Greg had to return to Princeton briefly to administer exams to graduate students (because not only is he a Visiting Fellow at Merton College, he is also the temporary Head of Graduate Studies in Plasma Physics back at Princeton while his colleague is on sabbatical this semester), the scarf arrived, and Greg took it back with him a week later to one very happy Jane. And as it turned out, Oxford had a bit of a cold snap for a week or so, so she could actually sport her new acquisition. Yippee.
When such serendipitous things occur, all seems right with the world, if only for a day or so. But we'll take it.
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