Sitting home and lonely can sometimes be boring, and depressing. To have company with other people or having an interest for sport or something that you can do, can probably beat the loneliness. Apparently being a shopaholic, or actually, an online shopaholic can beat the loneliness.
The short story “Oniomania in the Empty Days” which is written by Beverly Lucey, deals with this woman named Mavis, who is lonely and addicted to one of the biggest online auction website in the world, Ebay.com. Mavis and her husband Darnell moved to Missouri a while ago and bought a new house there because Darnell got a new job. Darnell is not a big fan of Mavis’ shopping-on-Bay-thing. According to him, they can not afford all that stuff, because the still have not sold their old house yet, and now also with all Mavis’ shopping on eBay, it does not make it easier for him to afford two houses. However Darnell does not notice everything Mavis buys, because everything looked familiar for him, or he would think that it was things from her other life she lived. So while Darnell kept working to make money to afford two houses, he let Mavis do the paper stuff at home such as bills, which leads to that he actually never sees what Mavis uses the money on. Lost auctions on stuff that she felt belonged to her, nagged her.
One of the reasons why Mavis cannot stop buying things on eBay, is because moving so much makes her feel incomplete. She wants to get the stuff she feels that belongs to her, to feel settled.
Mavis is pretty much lonely all the time. She has not met anyone in her new neighborhood, so when Darnell is gone for work, the only thing she can do is to sit on the computer and buy things on eBay.
One day, Darnell takes Mavis out to a restaurant called The Pig Out BBQ. The plant manager had reserved a room for all his supervisors. Even though she knew that she would get outbid on