“Caveat Emptor” (Let the buyer beware)

- my father's favorite Latin phrase

Good news this week, folks; I checked my mail box and instead of the regular bills, there was a check from the government. My tax return had finally arrived! Now I don't want to brag but I did pretty good this year, and well, let's just say that this whopping $15 bonus to my wallet is going to be spent wisely.

Oh, you read that correctly, I got $15 back from Uncle Sam. I'm sure it cost more than that to just print and mail the check, but, still, it was money I didn't have to pay out, so I'm looking at it as a positive experience.

I remember as boy that whenever I'd be given some money - on my birthday or some such thing - I'd always jokingly be told to not spend it all in one place. I'd like to be able to say that I'll spread the wealth as much as possible but, come on, how far can I stretch this?

Sure I could spend my day going from one convenience store to the next buying scratch-off tickets but I'd end up wasting my return check just on gas.

So what to do with my grand fortune?

It's not like there are a lot of options on a budget this tight, so I decided to just be simple and splurge on some of the fancier products I don't normally get for myself.

By my calculation, I would only be able to buy two or three items with the extra money, so, as I walked down the aisles, I looked closely at all the products being offered up for sale and noticed some odd advertising schemes that were being used to part me from my cash.

Let me ask you, how can something be both new and improved? Seems impossible to me.

I raised an eyebrow though when I strolled down the pet food aisle and saw that every other can states how great the flavor is.

Who decides something like that? I can't get my dog to stay off the couch let alone get a job filling out market research surveys.

It was in the laundry aisle that I finally came to the end of my journey. You see, I got these new sheets a few weeks ago and I figured why not take the extra money and get some high-end detergent and perhaps smelly fabric softener to match.

I picked up a bottle of laundry soap that boasted it could get out both grass and blood stains.

With marketing like this the only thing I could figure was that people must be more accident prone than I thought. The fabric softener decision was pretty easy, I had two scents to choose from; Spring Woods or Lavender Fields.

I went with the Lavender Fields because we all know what bears do in the woods, and I don't want my clothes smelling like that.

After all was said and done, it seemed like money well spent.

Auburn native Bradley Molloy's column appears here, each

Sunday, in The Citizen.

He can be reached at lovonian@hotmail.com