“BUY one get one free!” read the flyer, which my mother was waving at me. This way of promoting sales had set off a chain reaction among many including my own parents. And I looked sadly at my mother’s reaction to the news that tomatoes were cheaper in one place by 50 halalas than in another! Her voice and enthusiasm rose when she informed me that if I bought a kilo of onions, the second kilo was free! Great, my life ambitions were fulfilled. Now I could die in peace!

I rolled my eyes in boredom while my mother “enlightened” me with her lecture about the importance of money and how my generation didn’t value it and how hard it was to earn enough. I wondered if the flyers made one feel more careful about money or spoilt them and drew them toward the great community of misers!

As I looked around our house, lying on the floor were many flyers, each promoting a new offer and each trying to beat another. Every week thousands of flyers are printed and passed along to customers, enticing them into stores. Many like me stand in amazement in the malls and watch the reactions of their fellow human beings. It’s a mad, mad rush out there, a passion which escalates with each new promotion. I’ve visited such a commotion and it is an experience I don’t want to repeat.

It was a Wednesday night and I realized my mistake as soon as I had set foot in the mall. And to think, it wasn’t even planned! I found my way to the fruits and vegetables section. As I saw people attack the stalls like a group of locusts on a green field, my attention was diverted by a person who stood before a small stall with a variety of eggs. As I watched him, he meticulously searched in every crate for the biggest eggs and then walked off with his prize processions!

As I looked around, I saw a stall offering free tastes of its new product. There was a crowd around the frail young man in the stall; the fear in his eyes showed that he was a new recruit to this grand game of speed and wit. Hands reached from everywhere, snatching cups and spilling half from each one. The whole scene bewildered me and I tried to escape from this lunacy.

Then I overheard an argument between a customer and a cashier, “My bill was SR9.95 and I gave you SR10. Where is my 5 halalas?” The cashier replied somewhat cagily, “I don’t have any 5 halala pieces. Take some Gandour chewing gum instead.”

As the customer looked in horror at the cashier for suggesting so vile a thing, I fled into the parking lot where I took several deep breaths of fresh air. As I looked around, nothing was different from what it was inside.

Cartons of milk and juice were being carried into cars; bags were full of groceries with the notorious yellow streamers reading “Buy one and get one free.” People exchanged pleasantries with each other and discovered that there was another offer available in another mall!

What had happened to the good old days where people simply went into a shop and bought what they needed in peace and tranquillity? I guess in those long-ago times, people didn’t realize the real “importance” of money!