The Wet Suit: The Ultimate in Prophylactic Shopping

Both Duchesse and Funny have questioned the purchase of a men's large brand new wet suit. Only $3.49, minus my senior discount of 15%.

What can I say? Well, prophylactic shopping is partly psychological: OMG! I am succumbing to the onslaught of tempting ads that come in my mailbox, both actual and virtual. We never watch television, so those ads don't come my way.

Or even, I'm so depressed. I need a retail pick-me-up.

But prophylactic shopping (should I copyright or trademark that term? I wonder....) is also totally pragmatic. It involves getting something that would cost a lot of money or bother ONE DAY if you will need it.

That's why I picked up copies of books like A Separate Peace, figuring that my children would need to read this high school classic.

That's why I bought not one but two tuxedoes for under $5.00 each, figuring that Frugal Son would need one for a prom. The back-up was for just in case, plus it was a lot better quality than the first I got.

The upshot of these ventures? Neither of my children needed A Separate Peace, but I gave a copy or two to other teens who needed it. Eventually, these wended their way to the used bookstore or paperbackswap.com. My 20 cent investment was no biggie, anyway.

As for the tuxedoes. Frugal Son got two uses out of one of them. He lent the other to his friend Michael. So my $10.00 investment saved Frugal Son about $100.00 and his friend $50.00. Lending to a friend releases frugal karma into the atmosphere and benefits the universe, as far as I'm concerned.

Lest this sounds as though I have an unerring sense of what to purchase in my shopping ventures, let me assure you, I do not. Many of my just-in-case items have languished unused. Eventually, these go to Goodwill. But that releases some karma too. If I buy something for $3.00 and don't use it, it can then sell again for $3.00. So my $3.00 investment yields $6.00 for a charity. 100% appreciation. There must be something wrong with my math here.

OK. Back to the wet suit. It is a size that would fit the two men in my life. We did go to Hawaii once, where the brother of Mr. FS indeed wore a wet suit for snorkeling. We snorkeled sans wet suit.

We also go to Florida each winter. So we are around the water now and again.

If we ever want a wet suit, it would take time and money to get one. This one was acquired for little time and the investment was not much. It is now in the box where we store our snorkeling equipment, which we purchased for our trip to Hawaii because it was as cheap to buy as to rent. We've used it several times since.

That explains my wet suit logic. The down side of buying it is less than the down side of NOT buying it in the event we need one.

And perhaps I can take it to Buffalo Exchange as a Halloween costume.