I Miss The Old Target

image lifted from runchadrun

In my baby book, on the line next to "Baby's First Car Trip," it says "Gemco." Gemco, of course, later became Target, which is basically the same store with better picture frames.

A few years ago, this friendly little Target was demolished and rebuilt into the megamart it is today. I'm not sentimental because I'm a knee-jerk opponent of change, but there's a lot I miss about the previous incarnation of Tar-jhay.

First of all, now that you have to take an escalator to get into the store, there's no more pretending that you're going to run in and run out, which never actually happened to me anyway, because of mission creep. Going up that escalator gives a trip to Target a new sense of commitment.

The thing I miss the most, though, is the garden department. I used the garden entrance more often than I used the main entrance, simply because it was so pleasant to walk through the cool, damp mini-jungle filled with blooms, and so pleasant to check out at the garden register with its shorter line. Then there was Christmas time, when the whole garden department would be converted into a tree lot, dense with fragrance. Nothing is better to put you into a cheerful shopping mood.

An employee told me that Target got rid of the garden department because it was a money-loser, but I think that was a short-sighted analysis. I'd often go for the plants, but stay for the toothpaste.

Finally, the makeover makes this Target more exactly like every other Target. Of course a big-box discount chain is hardly the place to go searching for local color, but the move towards uniformity makes Target that much more like the retail equivalent of pod people.

There's no more sense of ownership -- you know, that feeling that you get when you go into a foreign Target and say to yourself, "they would never put the beach towels next to the greeting cards at my Target." That feeling then leads to feeling a little bit homesick -- or Targetsick, actually -- for what you've come to believe is your Target.

My Target has been gone for a long time now, and I guess she's never coming back.