There I was on a Saturday afternoon, waiting in line to sell my soul. After 25 minutes trying to find a parking spot and walking the near-marathon distance to the building, I was standing in the doorway of Ames’ newest store, Best Buy. With a feeling in my gut somewhere between nausea and ecstasy, I entered the corporate conundrum that stands for everything I’m against.

Unfair competition. Big business. The end of Mom-and-Pop stores. It was all there in a haze of blue and yellow, beckoning me to indulge in impulse buying and zero percent financing.

They tell upstart small business owners not to expect to turn a profit for the first five years. A Best Buy employee told me the store expected to turn $300,000 in sales that day — more than most small business owners can hope for in a year.

What was I thinking? Why on earth would I want to support a store that could single-handedly wipe out most of the small businesses in Ames? This was the last thing I wanted to do.

But the hypocrisy is dripping from every word of this column. As much as I would have liked to have spit on the floors and “accidentally” knocked a few hundred dollars’ worth of merchandise off the shelves, I instead became enticed by row after row of low-priced, shiny new music, movies and entertainment equipment, all begging for my attention.

To Best Buy, CDs and DVDs are “loss leaders.” In other words, they can afford to sell an album for $8 and a film for $15, since many customers will be enticed (or coerced) into picking up larger items like a new television or surround-sound stereo system to compliment their smaller buys. And with no interest for 12 months, who can resist?

I’m no better than anyone else. Before I left the store, I was fully equipped with a “The Boondock Saints” DVD and a hard-to-find (at least in Ames) copy of a Murder City Devils album.

For many college students, their expendable income is spent on entertainment — specifically, music and movies. As far as quantity and price go, Best Buy is probably the best choice Ames will ever have, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best option for the community as a whole. The independent record store owner who has to watch all of his customers, most of whom he knows by name and what they listen to, slowly stop walking in the front door because of his necessarily higher prices.

There’s a reason Best Buy is still in business, and why it continues to expand its reach across the United States. They know how to get bodies in the door and sell merchandise, but every new store is just one step closer to a homogenization of the market.

As I said earlier, I’m as much at fault as everyone else. Best Buy offers low prices and a great selection, all in one convenient location. But while those conveniences may not have a negative backlash on me directly, you can bet there’s someone putting a “For Sale” sign in the window of their family-owned business because of it.