Shopping fears realized

I am not a huge shopping kind of girl. For one thing, I despise spending more than a few dollars on clothes. Why waste money on name-brand stuff if there's a perfectly good second hand store down the street? Give me a good bookstore and I'm as happy as a slobbery puppy. Give me a large Goodwill and I'm creaky, prune-skinned lady in heaven. However, if circumstances are such that I have a chunk of money to spend on quality clothes, I might stop sticking my nose up at an outlet mall if given the chance. With that being said, last week I DID have some birthday money to buy a dress, so for perhaps one of the first times I found myself earnestly searching the outlets for the perfect one. The good news is that I'm very picky when it comes to dresses so it's easy to glance at a rack and decisively determine that not a one of them will do. The bad news is that because I am terribly picky there is almost nothing out there in the modern world that will suit my standards of taste, modesty, and price. And of course size is something to be considered as well, since there are styles in the little girls' store that fit the above criteria. But then, as those dresses I might look at wistfully wouldn't be modest even if they DID fit over my head, I suppose they might just fall into the modesty category after all.

So I found my inexperienced self perusing outlets in both PA and GA last week, donning the air of an expert when I'm actually a novice. Squashing my fears and hesitations, I plunged into store after store, trying to take a brief survey through the window first to determine if this were the appropriate kind of store. What is the appropriate kind of store, you might ask? Well, to be quite honest, I've long lived in a kind of fear that I'll find myself unwittingly browsing a maternity store. I have indeed studied certain sections of Target, only to realize with a blush (a blush in spirit, if not in actuality) that I won't be needing such clothes for quite some time now, if ever. Then I hastily back away, furtively looking about in hopes that nobody noticed my faux pas. So as I said, I usually gave the store a quick survey through the window before entering. As long as it wasn't a men's store, I was okay. As long as it wasn't a maternity or even a plus-sized women's store, I was golden.

It's amazing how the atmosphere of a store can often indicate what kind of things they sell and what kind of prices they have. For instance, I was struck by two extremes. In one store they played loud bumpy music, used dark colors in their decorating, and had many girls rifling through their loaded racks that were full of overly trendy, cheap clothes. I despise the overly trendy, and even though their prices ($5, $10) looked good, I high-tailed it out of there pretty quickly because the place felt creepy. On the other hand, I went into one or two other stores where the atmosphere was light, the clothes looked elegant, the music was played softly or replaced with an eery silence, and there was hardly a soul present. One glance at the price tags told me why, and after moseying about pretending to look interested, I slipped out of there because once again I felt out of place, only for very different reasons.

On the last day of my shopping ventures, I plowed through the stores with my mom. Most of the time we went inside the stores together, but sometimes we separated for a few minutes while she skipped ahead to a shoe store and I checked out the two or three clothing stores between where we were and the shoe store. On one of these occasions, not seeing my mom come out of the store ahead, I was bent to kill time, so I went into a store without doing my customary survey to see what they were. I sneaked in, trying to look like I had a purpose so no one would offer to help me out. In the last store I had let the lady show me around and I determined this time that I just wanted to casually look for myself. Unfortunately, a store worker took notice of me and hailed me, so I threw off my guilt and greeted her warmly. Could she help me look for anything? No, thank you. Was I shopping for myself? Ah, yes, I was.

"Well, in that case," she said politely, taking in my bony frame in one quick glance and pretending to ignore it, "you should know that we only sell size 14 and up."

Oh.

Ow.

Oops.

How embarrassing!

I thanked her, and hurriedly--without appearing too hurried--made my escape. One of my worst shopping fears had been realized. I had ignorantly wandered into a plus-sized women's store! Horrors!!! Mind you, I have nothing against plus-sized women, their sizes, or their stores. However, the fact that I found myself there unwittingly and the store people KNEW it could have bothered me to an extreme. Why couldn't they have just kindly minded their own business and let me make the discovery on my own? In that case at least I could have pretended I was looking for something for some relative and saved some face about it. Why is it that Southern store people are just extra pesky? Don't they understand that I'm a Northerner and just like to be left alone? Ah, the woefulness of me!

Actually, after exiting the store I chuckled to myself, if not a little sheepishly. It might have been rather embarrassing, but I was not too scathed. If that's my worst shopping fear, it really can't get much worse than that not too harrowing experience. Unless, perhaps, I walked into a maternity store . . . or a men's plus-sized maternity store, but that's kind of unlikely.