This baboon walks into Nordstrom’s department store. He’s totally focused, apparently bent on accomplishing a specific task. In his wake, I detect whiffs of credit cards burning holes in pockets. Unaccustomed to simians at the mall, I follow the baboon into Nordie’s, pausing on the threshold where I feel a strange misting of my eyeballs, blinded by the dazzling array of products. The heady intoxication of so many choices screams, “Buy everything, sweetie. You need it all.”

I’m a cat on a hot tin roof, cooling my heels on the inviting marble tiles, pretending I’ll just have a looksee. A sales associate approaches, holding a spritzer. When I twitch, she pulses a fragrant spray over me.

When the baboon steps onto the escalator and rides it up, I follow him, struggling to remember why I came into Nordie’s and what I intended to purchase. At the third floor, the baboon — let’s call him Carl — steps off the escalator and heads for the sleepwear department. I follow him. Maybe it was sleepwear I came to purchase.

When the baboon steps onto the escalator and rides it up, I follow him…

Carl makes quick work of scanning the racks, flipping through pajamas, feeling fabrics, checking sleeve lengths, numbers of buttons, the elastic. Meanwhile, I’m hypnotized by the choices offered. Am I shopping for a sexy nightie or super comfy PJs?

A tiny voice whispers, “You didn’t come into Nordstrom for sleepwear. You caught a whiff of burning credit card, followed Carl into the store, and you are now experiencing retail madness.”

I’m sucked into the time warp of buy-mania. This is, after all, the strategy of retail establishments: “Grab them on the way in — or even just in passing — they have no fiscal discipline — and drop them into the retail world’s hypnotic grip.”

I watch as the sales associate marvels at the money, as if insulted by it.

Nordie’s might employ some trance-inducing misting device, say, in those perfume spritzers. Maybe it leaks from valves located over the threshold. The intoxicant may be time-released. I notice the store has no clocks, and my cellphone is disabled. Paranoia seizes me but fails to eject me from the store, where I bask in the enduring fragrance of buy-mania.

I search for Carl. He’s found his jammies; a onepiece Union Suit, red, with buttons and a drop seat, a trifle long in the arms and legs, but for a fee, a store seamstress will alter the garment. Carl declines alterations and produces cash. I watch as the sales associate marvels at the money, as if insulted by it. She wraps the garment and hands it to Carl, who then descends via the escalators. Bending over, I can see Carl all the way down on the main floor, heading for the exit.

My cellphone’s still on the fritz, and I can’t seem to find anyone who knows the time, but I’m guessing that Carl’s visit to Nordstrom took about 20 minutes. Out of the average life span of a baboon — 35 years — that’s a precious 20 minutes used up of Carl’s 18,408,206.8 minutes of life. But Carl is a baboon, not a human, and therefore wastes no time.

Four hours later, I snap to attention. I’m gazing at myself in a mirror in the Costume Jewelry department, trying on necklaces, dozens of them, each more absurd than the last. My stomach churns as I emerge from the trance state. Noting through a window that darkness has fallen, I feel sick. Of what?

If I calculate all the minutes I’ve wasted at the mercy of merchants, I fear they might equal the average life span of a baboon.

Of my all-too-human penchant for wasting precious time, when in fact I’m avoiding any semblance of a raison d’etre, throwing my life away in bits and pieces of retail-induced languishing.

If I calculate all the minutes I’ve wasted at the mercy of merchants, I fear they might equal the average life span of a baboon. That doesn’t count time frittered away at home, staring at a computer screen, having set out to accomplish one specific task and then forgetting it as soon as the screen lays out the entire universe before me. I forget why I’m here, staring at the screen. The possibilities are endless, therefore I freeze. This is not the retailers’ Black Magic; something in me wants to daydream, flee from tasks at hand, and fantasize in a self-induced coma of escapism.

Ben Franklin said, “Time is money.” Still, money isn’t the point of spending time on Earth; it’s one of many vehicles for enhancing time, if spent wisely. Time flies when you’re in a trance, and money too.

A bird on the wire is no slouch. It’s seeking its next meal, or a mate. A lion in the bush has reason to rest. Just ask his female partner, who has even more reason to rest. Baboons work, and baboons play. Baboons don’t lollygag. Homo sapiens, with rare exception, are the only living species that wastes time.

Carl behaved like a baboon.

Me? I’m only human.