The Prime of my life: How Amazon came to dominate the Kumar household

I hate traditional shopping. It’s just wandering aimlessly through a overly clean, crowded, noisy mall and looking through the entire store even though you just came to buy black pants.

And why go to get the black pants, when the black pants could come to you? Hence the business model for Amazon, the one-stop pampering shop for nearly every single person in the world.

Want a rubik’s cube? It’ll be at your house before you can say “Oof.” Want a new copy of “Lord of the Flies” to replace that dog-eared one the school gave you? On your doorstep in a day. Want a $195 Philips Sonicare smart electric toothbrush? Just wait a day or two, and it’ll be in your mouth before you know it.

You can even order tasteless corn flakes (I really don’t know why they’re considered food) with Amazon Pantry, organic vegetables with Amazon Fresh and the perfect tux that you’ll never wear after prom with Amazon Wardrobe.

If you don’t trust online shipping to get you your salami sandwich to you in one piece, you can go to Amazon’s recently purchased Whole Foods stores to buy it. Amazon has even unveiled In-Car Delivery, where they bring parcels to wherever your car is parked, unlock your car and put the parcel in it. To be completely honest, I trust Amazon a lot, but I don’t trust them enough to let them in my car.

When it comes to shopping, Amazon beats going to brick-and-mortar stores 11 out of 10 times. Many argue that in person, you can come across something new, and if you don’t like something you can immediately get something else. With Amazon, you can do both: It constantly gives you suggestions that actually makes sense and if you don’t like something, you can just return it.

My family also depends on Amazon the way I depend on pearl milk tea: a little bit too much. We’ve loved Amazon for as long as I can remember. This dependence, however, became truly extreme when I was old enough to realize how unpleasant in-person shopping really is.

We get everything from binder paper to 2-ton biology textbooks from Amazon. Every weekend, we stream movies from Amazon Prime. If I forgot that I had a project until the day before the deadline, I just ask my dad to get materials from Amazon and I’ll be done on time. (My dad works for Google, yet he still has the newest version of Alexa.)

Quite frankly, this dependence on Amazon doesn’t disturb me. If it gets me the stuff I need when I need it, then I’m happy.

Economists are screaming that Amazon is becoming a monopoly and must be stopped before they have the marketplace cornered.

I say, Who cares? Let them become a monopoly. In fact, I say let them run the government. It’d be a lot better than what we have now and we might even be able to get other countries to like us. Everyone loves Amazon, so everyone would love the U.S. by the transitive property (don’t ask me how that works.)

Amazon clearly knows how to make people happy. They cater to the needs of the people. They have the variety, the style and the marketing to garner the support of everyone. And most importantly, they have one-day shipping!

From the way I describe Amazon, you may be wondering, “Are you addicted?” That’s a hard question. Let me answer with my answer and a question of my own. Yes, and why aren’t you?