CAVEAT EMPTOR

Mr. Wonderful couldn’t resist the ad. “$75 SHOES NOW ON SALE FOR $39! LIMITED QUANTITY. ORDER TODAY!” He did.

I was away visiting New Jersey grandchildren. He was home alone, dining on franks-’n-beans before settling into his blue leather recliner to switch from Fox News to the Golf Channel and back again.

For a man who prides himself on thrift, who knows the value of a dollar — who some people suggest still has his third grade lunch money — the television commercial was an unstoppable, irresistible and overwhelming temptation.

When I returned from my grandma-fix several days later, Mr. W greeted me with, “Wait’ll you see the shoes I ordered!” “Zappos?” I asked. “Uh no.”

“LLBean?” “Uh, no. I saw them on television and they look fantastic. And what a buy!”

For the following six weeks, he was the image of the Old Man in “A Christmas Story,” breathlessly awaiting the arrival of his “major award.” He got excited whenever the UPS truck lingered in the driveway. He checked the mailbox hourly. “What’s taking so long?” he moaned time and again. We also noted that $39 from “unknown vendor” had cleared our Visa statement.

Two days ago we discovered a small duct-tape-wrapped plastic bag on the front porch. Not exactly the crisp “smile box” from Amazon or the identifiable green packaging from Bean. Truthfully? My daughter’s yellow Labrador Lucy could have wrapped it better.

The return address read WANGXIAOYAN warehouse, Wenchang Road, SUZHOU, JIANGSU, CHINA. Plus a phone number. Plus “value in US dollars: $6.”

He tore the package open with the glee of a five-year-old on Christmas morning. “Look at these!” he said, holding up a pair of the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen.

“Don’t they look like fine Italian shoes?” he asked. “Sorta like Gucci?”

“And I don’t have to tie them — they’re slip-on loafers!”

“Look at the ‘M’ — who else in town has monogrammed shoes? Check out the cushioning inside!”

After trying them on, his enthusiasm didn’t waver one iota.

“These will be my lounge shoes!”

Then, after walking around the kitchen island a few times, he said, “The soles are a little slippery so I won’t wear them out when we go dancing.” (Hello? Dancing? My memory gets foggier by the nano-second but I’m hard-pressed to come up with the last time “we went dancing.”)

For the next few hours he wore The Shoes. Then, they simply disappeared onto a lower shelf of his shoe rack in the closet. Collecting dust. Awaiting, I pray, a trip to the Good Will bin.

Maybe he sensed my lack of appreciation for his great buy. Perhaps he could sense that I wouldn’t "go dancing” with him in those horrors.

Probably, he realized that “you get what you pay for,” as I did last year when I purchased a “$90 Cashmere-Like Stylish Sweater for only $44” from an ad I saw on Instagram. Same WANGXIAOYAN warehouse… same result.

Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, we learn the lesson! Caveat emptor.