P.S. I love you HD!

Dear Home Depot:
Thank you for building your soul-sucking monstrosity on the idyllic grounds where my love for bargain shopping was born, K-Mart. K-mart was where I used to watch my 11-year-old friend ingest a four-pack of O Henry bars after school. K-mart is where I bought my first, and hopefully not my last, pair of black acid-wash jeans ( thank-you Gloria Vanderbilt!) K-mart is where I perfected my Ms. PacMan skills. K-Mart is where I bought my first pair of boxer-shorts for a boy (Thank-you Joe Boxer happy face boxers you helped cement a relationship of late night phone calls and furtive note passing in cadets into a solid two week romance). But you know, I’m all for progress; So I didn’t care when the spot formering belong to K-mart turned into the spot occupied by Zellers and that turned into the current home of Home Depot.

You are cunning and shrewd; I will give you that Home Depot. You are big and bold and have very high ceilings and big huge doors that open up for tiny people to walk through. But that is all part of your plan, isn’t it? You make everything so big that people assume they are getting a deal. $30 for a coat rack? Well, this is Home Depot, so it MUST be a good deal. There are no service people around; so that must mean the cost of hiring employees is cut to make the products cheaper. Right? WRONG! Oh, so, so, wrong. That cost goes into their fat pockets. Their fat pockets that continue to plump away while the naïve home renovators try to deduce what exactly is the difference between a seesaw hinge and a teeter hinge (I kid you not, two ‘official’ names for two very different types of hinges at the blood-sucking HD).

But you know what Home Depot? Despite my distaste for your conglomerate, big-box marketing plan; I cannot resist you. You are a big, overpriced eyesore; but you are open late, have almost everything I need; have those convenient automatic checkouts (that give cash-back! Sweet), and offer me spacious roaming grounds to buy more overpriced, over-ambitious tools and project kits that will never make any sense but at least you have a good return policy!

Home Depot, I know you are bad. You are the Wal-Mart of home renovations. But, I just can’t seem to get enough. You give me hope that my place will one day come together. You let me saw things and I don’t even have to buy them if I make ‘a mistake.’ You let me take as many paint samples as I want and poke and nudge as many displays as I please. You let me play on the dream computer a I build my model kitchen. You let me pretend I am the pizza delivery guy knocking when I am deciding which door I want.

You made me love you, and I hate myself for it! Home Depot, I wish I could quit you! But I can’t so, I’ll see you tonight!

XOX