No-Touching Stores

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Classen’s idea of often being warned not to touch things and then feeling reluctant to really examine and discover things in the world  reminded me of when I was a little kid, my family would go into fancy shops and they would be “no-touching stores” for me and my sisters. When my family would be out exploring a new town, as we did a lot as I was growing up, we would go into pretty much any store that any of us wanted to. Some of them were toy shops, thrift stores, or random chains, but sometimes my parents would want to go into “grown-up stores”, and by that I mean a store with a lot of breakable items. I feel like in most families, one parent would go inside the store and the other would stay outside with the kids, but my sisters and I were well behaved so we got to go into the fancy stores. The rule was, though, that we could go in but we weren’t allowed to touch anything there, so that kind of store quickly became known among the whole family as “no-touching stores”. 

I think it’s really interesting that now, while I don’t go into that many fancy stores because I have no reason to, when I do, I still tend not to touch anything. I know I won’t break anything because I’m an adult and I’m not that clumsy but there is still that little fear inside me that I will. So I guess my parents conditioned me and my sisters to not touch breakable items but that honestly isn’t really a problem because I would not want to pay for something that I broke.

 

Comments

  1. Dana WoychowskiMay 13, 2022 at 7:21 PM

    This blog post brought up a specific memory for me. When I was at a flea market with my parents around the age of four or five, I remember reaching out to touch a rhinestone Hello Kitty pin (because I loved Hello Kitty so much, of course I needed to pick it up) before being scolded by the vendor. I was shocked, I had never been discouraged from exploring my senses, let alone from a random stranger. It produced an anxiety in me that is scared to touch things in stores today. I too know that I am an adult with the capability not to break things, but the flea market event has clearly had lasting effects on how I behave while shopping.

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