Amazon is not just a river

I never bought much online when I lived on the mainland.  Not one single thing in my 20’s in New York or during my four years in Pennsylvania. That’s when Amazon was still known best as a long river, not far from the Selym River (family joke).

I just checked the date: and Amazon.com was incorporated July 5th, 1994, in Seattle, not that far from where I once lived in Beaverton, Oregon…  but very, very far from the second longest river in the world.

Take note that there was some name changing that took place — the original name for Amazon was Cadabra, Inc. which got dropped quickly because a lawyer thought it sounded too much like Cadaver, Inc.  Cadabra customer service might have struggled with complaints about well-buried goods, and back then, as now, the coffin business was an on-site operation.

So why didn’t Mr. Bezos choose the Nile for his mail order enterprise? Nile Prime slips off the tongue more quickly than Amazon Prime… Maybe he had family connections close to the Amazon which helped provide start-up cash. Maybe he just wanted to stick to the same hemisphere.

In any case, Amazon and I have a thing going. I’ve ordered countless items over the past almost five years.Much of  this habit t could be related to my living on a volcanic-prone island in the middle of the Pacific — far from both rivers. I’m not a shopaholic, I just need certain items that you can’t access easily on this 4000 square mile island I call home.

Should you wonder, there’s a camraderie that builds from finding and sharing the right tights or easy on and off work-out items. (“December 12, 2017: Wanda Ten Times on Each Side”) has a fabulous knack for finding the indispensable sporty stuff you you need to wear in the gym (and other places in town). And she’s big on sharing, so when she finds something she likes she sometimes picks one up for me, too — from Costco, Target, Ross for Less, wherever her errands take her that day. Some of her choices make me feel like I’m  in a compression tank, and others fit perfectly. We’re not exactly the same size — but close enough.

Now it’s one thing to be on the receiving end of an exceptionally generous teacher and another to share the fun. That’s where Amazon comes in. I started ordering workout wear from Mr. Bezos’ company after striking out at the local stores. And soon texts began flowing to Wanda with order copies of my latest purchase, which she sometimes then ordered herself. Reciprocity is so satisfying and seeing our identical tell-tale straps in different colors has been almost as scrumptious as sharing a piece of purple sweet potato cheesecake, which we’ve also done. And there’s been some cross-fertilization: when Wanda stumbled across a solo rescue bra that set the bar for comfort, she helped me track down its cousin on the Nile, or whatever it’s called these days.

So if I had a late start in the online shopping business, I’m catching up these days with a procession of delivery notices which alert me to my latest Cadaver Prime arrival or something like that.