We have to attend two weddings soon. Hadn’t been to one in a few years and, wouldn’t you know it, the gaggle of gowns hanging in the closet don’t fit. Must be that languishing forlornly shrinky-dinks sequins. Satin and polyester, too.
Macy’s touted a sale – when does the store not? – so I trundled over to see what I could see. Even wore Skechers with arch and ankle support, to assure that my feet would not betray my hunter-gatherer purposes.
I also wore shorts, showcasing a well-freckled tan. The day was hot and humid, unreasonably so, for a pampered Californian. Macy’s had to run its store air conditioner. We did not. We’re economizing on electricity as well as water in this drought-stricken state. I owed the store a buck or two for the heat reprieve…
As I’ve mentioned before, my Mini-Cooper zips. It also snuggles into mini-parking spaces, such as found at the mall. Easiest fifteen minutes of my day was that drive and park job. I was looking forward to the mini-shopping spree.
I mindlessly waltzed to the escalator, successfully avoiding the gazillion beauty supply counters – who knew there were that many eyes to shadow and lips to gloss? Muzak and good shoes made striding the highly polished floors easy and, with an escalator to climb the stories, my only chore was to not mindlessly touch that handhold germ delivery system. Off-hand, the modus operandi.
I emerged in the middle of the third floor into… a forest of dresses. Long ones, short ones, vibrantly-colored to complement every skin tone and body shape on the planet. Some racks held multiple copies of the same design. Numerous rounds overflowed with sale items that clung to their hangars by a strap, some already tumbled to the floor. Other dresses were entrapped in the arms of earnest shoppers, hostages to their dreams.
It was a cluster—-ed scene, so I trudged right… into the Petite section. Never in my life have I belonged there, not even when I was a newborn.
I circled back and plunged into a behemoth Women’s section. While I adored the colors there, I didn’t think that my body shape had up-sized to that territory yet. And, if it had, I didn’t want to know.
Not today – didn’t want my temper to overheat like a body outdoors. Suck it up. Today the only item I wanted to burn was my Master Card.
I wasn’t blessed with an inborn sense of direction like most Hoosiers I know. Even while I lived in Indiana, with its rigidly square-aligned roads, laid along farm section lines, I’d become lost in space. My internal gyroscope has always zigged and zagged. Born that way, I surmise.
I soon felt affinity for salmon jumping upstream, as I flipped and flopped around the third floor… whose perimeter seemed to expand with each go-round. I felt that I might break into a sweat – or a panic attack – at any moment. Thank heaven my deodorant did its job.
There was too much space; there was not enough space… North, south, east, west: either way, I was spacing out. My sensory system overloaded, nearly kaput. The lone wolf clerk was enshrined behind a massive counter, taking other’s Master Cards, while I was lost in a ginormous multi-hued forest, without even a basket of Little Red Riding Hood’s treats for Grandma to console me.
My Master Card may have whimpered as I left, but my husband didn’t when I arrived home sans shopping bags. My ancestors may not have been proud (as per sign above), but he is (and he ain’t no wolf…).
I’ll remain: https://www.pjcolando.com/cabi-girl/
Recent Comments