You know Target is cursed, right? I don’t think anyone has ever walked out of a Target without buying three times the amount of stuff they came for. Even if you’re prepared, even if you go in thinking Okay, I just need some shampoo and new shoelaces, you’ll exit with shopping bags filled with items that you didn’t know you desparately needed until now.
I visited this beacon of hope and consumerism today with two of my roommates, and I thought I’d share some of my purchases with you, to serve as an example of what you probably shouldn’t do – or maybe inspire you do make your own trip.
Some communal items we got for our room are pretty standard: we were out of paper towels, so we got paper towels. We were out of hand soap, so we got hand soap. The bottle says it’s waterfall-scented, and while I don’t know if waterfalls actually have a distinctive scent, it does smell nice. We also got a broom and dustpan, which we probably should have acquired long before now; we cleaned our quad yesterday, and it looked pretty good – aside from the floors. More interestingly, we got two black light bulbs for our floor lamp. Come Halloween time, our room is going to look pretty snazzy.
As for my personal purchases, I started out with some fairly basic items, but then definitely diverged into “please, you are an adult” territory.
Glucose tabs: I’m diabetic, so when my blood sugar gets low I need something sugary to bring it up to a safe level; obviously, lots of things would work, but glucose tablets are basically just pure sugar with a little flavoring so they work really fast. I’ve been getting low a lot since the beginning of the year, so I bought three whole bottles of glucose tabs to replace the ones I’ve already gone through.
Shaving cream: Even though it’s getting colder, I always need shaving cream. It’s raspberry scented… that’s all I really have to say about this one.
Socks: I don’t really have a shortage of socks at the moment, so don’t go thinking I bought any run-of-the mill plain white gym socks or something. I’m now the proud owner of some ankle socks displaying a pair of otters taking a selfie, some knee socks which for some reason have alien spaceships abducting dinosaurs on them, and black thigh-high socks. I have no idea what to wear those last ones with, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The other two will be perfect for any occasion, of course.
Beanboozled: One of my roommates and I came across this while wondering around the Halloween section. I’ve never actually played Beanboozled before, so I convinced him to do it with me if I bought it. He keeps warning me that I’m “not prepared”.
Lipstick: I somewhat recently bought a pencil-type lipstick that I like a lot, but I’ve realized it was kind of a rip-off; it looks like it should twist up to give more product, but it doesn’t. I wanted to find something in a similar color that will hopefully last longer, and I came pretty close. It’s a little redder than I would have liked, but I think it looks good.
Eyebrow mascara: I am someone who is totally not on top of eyebrow maintenance, and while this seemed weird it also seems like a relatively easy way to keep my eyebrows somewhat in check, if it works. I haven’t tried it yet – fingers crossed.
Slime: This was another Halloween aisle selection. It came in pretty colors and was only a dollar, so naturally neither me nor my above-mentioned roommate could resist.