A Little Cash Therapy

Greetings from the Southern California economy, where rebound is our middle name. After long years of recession, followed by more long years of recession-phobia, something has finally gotten into us, something that asks: For God’s sake, man, do you have any idea how long we’ve gone without blowing a load of dough?

We awaken one morning and realize how tawdry our old clothes have become. Without warning, husbands all over town do the unthinkable and actually throw away entire pairs of old running shoes. Middle-aged women go through once perfectly acceptable closets and gasp at the sudden resemblance of their wardrobe to an archeological dig: The cocktail dress from their “babe” period, the postnatal strata of sweats, the variegated splotches of dried baby barf, the confused fortysomething layer (“young matron,” “old hippie,” “pastel business suits,” “Gap”).

The need--need--for new stuff makes our very ears ring, and like ex-cons just sprung from the big house, we stagger, blinking, into our old haunts, starting with the local mall. So much has changed since we last felt like shopping that, at first, we are afraid. But then something stirs, and we lift our faces. Yes, there it is! Consumer confidence!

People say economics is dry as dust, but down here in the last place in the nation to pull out of its slump, economics has gotten downright fun. For reasons that would be utterly unfathomable if you were to peek at our actual checkbooks, we skip merrily to the Sears store and buy a new fridge. Side-by-side! Automatic ice-maker! No money down!

On a roll, we sign up for a new washer and dryer, what the heck, and let rip a devil-may-care laugh when the saleswoman throws in the warranty for free. Then the kids mention school clothes and out come the Visas. Then we need detergent, and make a dash for the discount food warehouse.

There, though this is allegedly a place where people come to save money, we drop hundreds of dollars on enormous sacks of carrots and industrial-size jugs of barbecue sauce. By the time we’re through, we are simply too tired to cook. We see but one solution: eat out.

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There’s nothing like cash therapy, as an old shopping pal used to say. From the highest roller in Beverly Hills to the hardest-working gardener in East L.A., we have become giddy with relief at the rising tide.

Manufacturing is up, unemployment down. The state is cranking out 400,000 new jobs a year. The fact that a lot of them are crummy jobs and most households will need at least two of them to make ends meet--these things no longer throw us. Somebody out there is making money and--who knows?--this time, they might spread it around.

No longer do we dread the appearance of statisticians with flip charts and bad news. These are good-news days, and we can’t get enough of them. We want to talk stock markets. We want to talk mutual funds. We still can’t sell our houses except at a loss, but we want to talk capital gains.

Tax agreement in Washington? Tell us all about it. No matter that the fat cats win again. For the first time in memory, we feel dealt in. Send us your graphs, your indexes, your crunchers of numbers. And here, you thought we didn’t care.

We cared too much; that was the problem. We were reeling so badly from surprise and hurt pride that, for a long time, we Southern Californians couldn’t even examine our wounds to see whether they were serious. We were so panicked that even when the experts told us the recession was over, we couldn’t raise our heads to hear.

It took years for us to get beyond the fear-mongers and blame-layers, to screw up our courage and imagine good times again. Too many years, but in the meantime, we have found our measure, and though we’ve turned out to be mean when we’re cornered, we’ve also learned to adapt.

And so has come the rebound, which may turn out to be limited to our bosses, but which nonetheless feels mystical and profound. Strange, to experience the concrete hope that drives the abstract numbers. Wonderful, to know magnanimity again.

And if this newfound confidence is more mood than money, well, goodwill can be valuable, too. Maybe it’s a currency we can use to imagine a society in which the tide truly can rise for everyone. The songbird of prosperity is singing, and maybe this time we’ll realize that it’s a transient song. Maybe, for once, we’ll do more than dance as she chirps, “Cha-ching!”

Shawn Hubler’s e-mail address is [email protected]