Aunt Erma's Cope Book Read Online Free PDF Page A

putting them in a hypnoidal trance, which is the first stage of hypnosis. Some of them are even unable to distinguish friends who speak to them.
    They cover an aisle in less than twenty seconds, spending on the average of ninety-three cents a minute. Everything in the store has been researched, designed, and color coded to make you buy it. A shopper doesn't stand a chance.
    The real stress situation comes at the checkout. Assuming you are able to stave off impulse buying and stick to your list, the real test comes when you unload your groceries on the conveyor belt to be tallied. Here you have candy, gum, magazines, half-price items, special purchases, balloons, breath mints, cigarettes, and fountain pens. Steady now ... if you can hang on until the bell of the cash register sounds, your blink rate will be up to forty-five a minute and the trance will be broken. You will be able to function once more on a normal level.
    Just knowing what was happening to me proved to be of enormous help.
    The next time I went to the supermarket I whipped through it like 0. J. Simpson making his plane. At the checkout, however, I became uneasy as I saw a line. One woman was shuffling through her handbag trying to find identification for cashing her check.
    I tossed a package of razor blades into my basket.
    The next woman found a hole in her bag of brown sugar and we waited while the carry-out boy went back to get her a fresh package. I added a kite to my cart.
    Two more to go.
    The man had a cart full of bottles that he had been saving since glass was invented. It was his fault I bought the licorice whips.
    The lady in front of me only had three items, but the register tape ran out and had to be replaced. Let the patio lights and the birdseed be on her conscience.
    Finally it was my turn. The clerk began to tally up my order when she asked, “Do you want that book or are you going to read it here?”
    “I'll take it!” I said.
    The register bell rang up the total and I came out of my trance. But it was too late. I had a paperback of Looking/or Mr. Goodbody under my arm.

Unknown
    5
    looking for Mr. Goodbody
    the HEROINES of these books were always the same. A woman, disenchanted, going through life with a nose tissue in one hand and an absorbent towel in the other, decided to go it alone.
    She was always tall with “long legs that stretched luxuriously under the sheets.”
    Her stomach was flat, “belying her three beautiful children.”
    She had never known ecstasy before.
    She had also forgotten about the medical school degree she held until one day when she was lining the knife-and-fork drawer with Contact she ran across it.
    She felt guilty about leaving her husband with the three children, $565 a month mortgage payments, a pregnant cat, and a toilet that ran, but “she has to start liking herself” and she can only do that by taking charge of her own life.
    At my age, I didn't have the stamina for a rerun. I had begun to note that my body could only do one thing at a time—digest lunch or sit upright.
    I wasn't ready to assume the responsibility for the oil changes in my car. I had no curiosity as to where furnace filters went. And besides, I was too domestically geared. (Once when I saw Tom Jones performing in Las Vegas and everyone was throwing their hotel room keys at him, I gave in to an impulse and threw mine. I didn't realize until two days later I had thrown him the key to our freezer.)
    Displayed along with the books on married women with a “single” wish were the marriage manuals. They were a trip. I hadn't felt so frustrated since we tried to assemble a bicycle in the closet on Christmas Eve with two washers missing and the instructions written in Japanese.
    It made us wonder what we did with our time before Dr. David Reuber invented sex. (One book, How to Build a Relationship for Pennies in Your Own Home, even came with an applause sign for over the bed.)
    But it was the testimonials to freedom that intrigued me. In