Columnist Scott Dickensheets: Shopping all the way with Pete Barbutti

Scott Dickensheets

Tuesday, Dec. 23, 1997 | 10:15 a.m.

THIS IS how Pete Barbutti Christmas shops: laughing all the way.

"Can I help you?" the clerk asked.

"I'd like a haircut and a tire change," Barbutti yukked. Alas, while there are many requests the women at Macy's perfume counter can accommodate, hair and tire work are not among them.

It was the final Saturday before Christmas, and Barbutti was picking up the scent -- that is, gift perfume for an unspecified female relative. The Meadows Mall was packed with people searching the picked-over shelves, mall rats in sinking shops. They were a dozen deep at the candy store, shoulder-to-shoulder on the escalators. In other words, sheer torment for a mall-o-phobe like me.

I'm not bothered by the much-maligned commercialization of Christmas -- an American of the '90s, I'm OK with unbridled consumption. That's who we are. It's shopping I loathe, the act of going into stores and looking at stuff. But if it's Christmas, you're married and you must shop in the name of love, I'd heartily advise taking a good comedian along. Eases the tension.

"What's your name?" Barbutti asked the clerk, peering at her name tag. "Charlotte. Where you from, Charlotte?" The South? Great!

"I'll have essence of grits," he said.

"And chitlins!" she added.

Yes, this is how Pete Barbutti Christmas shops, or at least how Pete Barbutti Christmas shopped on this particular occasion, with a note-taking columnist in tow. But I suspect he'd have been that gregarious whether I was riding shotgun or not. He is a comedian, after all; going for the laugh is what he does, regardless of the setting. Let a mother round a corner in crowded Sears pushing a baby stroller, and he will announce, "Hey, this woman just bought a baby!" Invariably, people play along, grateful for the ad-libbed good cheer. "Yeah, it was very expensive," she will reply.

At the perfume counter, he unfolded his shopping list. "Just like a man," he told Charlotte, "have to come in here with a one-syllable word on a sheet of paper."

Charlotte approved of the scent. "It's a light fragrance, with no alcohol in it."

"Well, it's for a hooker," Barbutti cracked (just jiving, unspecified female relative). A few minutes later, she returned with his credit-card receipt. "I knew who you were," she exclaimed. "I just couldn't remember your name!"

Of course, there's more to shopping with Pete Barbutti than funny clerk banter; it has definite economic advantages. In Sears, where I was to buy my wife a last-minute gift, Barbutti worked his wiles on the salesman, Ralph.

"What time is it?" Ralph asked. Barbutti checked his watch: 11:14 a.m.

"If you'd have been in line at 11," Ralph said, "I could have given you 10 percent off."

"We were in line at 11 o'clock," Barbutti joked, turning to me. "Weren't we?"

"Yes," I verified, both of us somehow forgetting to mention that the line was at Macy's. But such was Barbutti's charm that not only did Ralph spot us the discount, he extended it to a woman buying the same item. "She was in line too," Barbutti insisted.

"Mommy," the woman's daughter whispered, "who is that man?"

Who is that man? He's my shopping pal, Pete Barbutti. I'm taking him when I buy my next car, because, man, I really hate that.