My granddaughter Lara was visiting last month. While she was here, she commented that I seem to have a lot of pink shirts. I guess she's right:
Okay, so one of them is pretty dark to be called pink, and one of them has a blue pinstripe. But counting those, I have 8 pink shirts.
"Gramps, why do you have so many pink shirts?" Lara asked.
"I think there are two reasons, Lara. The first one is that I like the colour pink. The second is that they were usually on sale, so I stocked up on them."
Even though I like pink, I like other colours for shirts and have "a few" in other colours, too. I expect that both of the reasons I gave Lara are correct. If the pink shirts had not been on sale, and if other colours had been on sale, I would probably have fewer pink shirts and more shirts of other colours. It's the substitution effect at work.
Careful observers will notice that
- Despite my earlier-mentioned hang-up, not one of these shirts is on a pink hanger.
- We buy quite a few clothes from Land's End. Even after paying all the import duties and taxes, they seem like good value for the money.
- These are all no-iron shirts. I mistakenly ordered a shirt that wasn't no-iron once and gave it away.
- These shirts all have pockets. I mistakenly have bought two shirts that have no pockets, and I gave one away. The other isn't pink. Maybe it's geeky, but I like to have a shirt pocket for my smartphone and a pen.