Mirror neurons vs. holiday shopping

Hubby is full of fascinating facts. Yesterday he was telling me about mirror neurons. Turns out that some blokes discovered clusters of neurons which activate not only when monkeys perform certain tasks, but when monkeys see other monkeys perform the same task. For example, if a monkey ate a banana, the neurons would fire. Then, if another monkey ate a banana, the same neurons would fire. When scientists started adding things together, they deduced that these special neurons play an important role in imitation.

So, more scientists got together and decided to conduct some tests on people, and found a similar response for empathy. For example, if you watch a team play sports and a cheating player gets hit in the crotch, your mirror neurons ultimately end up dancing with joy.(1)

So, how does this affect holiday shopping, you might ask? Flashback to last holiday season, when the part of my brain that refuses to learn from past mistakes -- or the part that steadfastly blocks out horrible past experiences -- decided to go to Mondo Buy instead of just ordering everything online. There is one other person on the aisle. I settle at a comfortable distance and reach for something and boom, the guy comes right over to look at the exact game I'm looking at. Personal space invasion! I drop it and move over, and as soon as I'm gone, he puts it back and looks elsewhere. I figure he is done, go back and pick it up my item of interest again, and smackadoo, dude comes right back over. In other words, the mirror neurons in this guy's brain made whatever I was looking at irresistible. If I looked at it, he had to look at it. If I had to pick it up, he had to pick it up. And this is how mirror neurons make holiday shopping abysmal. At least, for those of us who can't stand being pressed up against strangers who are savagely and pointlessly competing with me for goods that they only want because my eyeballs at pointed at them or my hands are in contact with them. And seriously... my eyeballs are not projecting glowing spotlights, and my hands don't drop sweat in the shape of discount barcodes!

This year, mirror neurons be damned!! I'm going to bask in the glow of my laptop and let only my cat hover whilst I shop online, as her fluffy belly creates an atmosphere that puts the panic-instilling shove-hover-and-grab mirror-neuron shopping spree to shame.

(1) To my sister's gigantic scientific noggin. Yes, yes, I know that this is an oversimplification but it conveys the general point to no ill effect and if anyone finds the topic of mirror neurons interesting, they're just gonna google it anyway.