The Angry Drunk

Warning! Non-Techie Content Ahoy!

You may have seen a com­mer­cial that K-Mart has been run­ning lately encour­ag­ing peo­ple to make use of the “lay­away” sys­tem for pur­chases this hol­i­day sea­son. To explain lay­away for those who didn’t grow up middle-class in the last few decades, here’s the deal: Back in the hoary days of yore, when you wanted to buy some­thing but didn’t have suf­fi­cient scratch on hand, one of the choices avail­able was lay­away. The way it worked was, you put some money down, and then made pay­ments every one to two weeks until you had paid for the item. Then it was yours.

I know that, sadly, there are prob­a­bly some peo­ple who have been struck dumb with incredulity at that descrip­tion. “Mon Dio!” you say, aghast. “Surely you would just put such a pur­chase on your credit card.”

And, of course, nowa­days that’s exactly what you would do. But, as hor­ri­fy­ing as it may seem, there once was a time when peo­ple didn’t lever­age their futures just to have the new shiny now. Maybe it’s actu­ally a good sign that stores are bring­ing the con­cept of lay­away back. Of course, the banks will

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