So I mentioned a few weeks ago that I'm making more of an effort to wear "real" clothes (aka not pajamas) when I leave the house and although it's a lot of pressure to have to find something that matches and that doesn't have a superhero logo on it every. darn. day. I've really been doing ok.
So last week when it was time to go grocery shopping, instead of my yoga pants and Batman tshirt, I put on a lovely, summery dress and off I went.
My hair even looked cute that day. It was awesome.
But as I was pulling into the Kroger parking lot, I noticed it looked pretty crowded. And all the cars there were large - like, Cadillac large. And everything was moving at about 1/10 normal speed. Some quick day-of-the-week searching in my head led me to believe that either a) there was some sort of rift in the space time continuum or b) it was senior citizen discount day.
Oh no!
Now please don't misunderstand me here. I like old people just fine. Really. It's large groups of any particular kind of people together in one place that I am not a fan of. There's some sort of herding instinct that seems to happen when you get people of a similar... whatever together, and THAT is what I prefer to avoid at all costs.
But I was already there and I was already DRESSED, for goodness sake, so I soldiered on. I was going to use my good hair day, so old folks, get out of my way. I have some eggs to buy.
And it wasn't terrible. I mean, it was BAD, but it wasn't really, really, really, really bad. So I kept at it. Eggs: check. Tomatoes: check. Bananas: ch... Oh, was that lady talking to me? I'll studiously look at these bananas and pretend she was NOT talking to me. NottalkingtomeNottalkingtomeNottalkingtomeNottalkingtomeNottalkingtomeNottalkingtome... Oh yes ma'am. How are you? You like my dress? Well, thank you so much!
At that point I felt slightly better about my decision to go ahead with my shopping despite the busyness of the store, because that 80 year old woman likes my dress! I mean really, who doesn't love a good compliment?
So I shopped on.
And it wasn't until the THIRD 80 year old woman told me in a whispery, paper thin voice how much she liked my dress that I realized OH FOR THE LOVE I'm dressed like an 80 year old woman. A stylish 80 year old woman, but still...
And so, that's the story of how I donated a nearly-new, only worn once dress to Goodwill.
I hope it's new 80 year owner and it will be very happy together.
Oh dear. I do wish you'd shared a picture of said dress before donating. Because it could've just been that the 80 year olds liked the dress because they remember back when everyone wore a dress to go shopping.
ReplyDeleteWell, all the women. Only Uncle Milty got away with wearing a dress in the 60s. And Nipsy Russell, was it? he Geraldine guy.
I thought about taking a picture, then I realized some things might just be better off undocumented, ya know?
DeleteOh no! Maybe the 80 year olds just appreciated your fashion sense, even though they knew they could never pull it off.
ReplyDeleteYour noticing of a herding behavior in humans reminds me of the time when I got some serious side-eye at a women's conference during break time for loudly commenting on it while navigating herds of meandering, slow-moving, and unaware women around the venue just to get a teen-dollar cheeseburger.
I am SO fascinated by watching people. I especially like to watch in places where there is a large group of people trying to do the same thing, like say go through a line for something. All it takes is ONE person to mess up the flow and suddenly - chaos. People are fascinating in their predictability sometimes.
DeleteThat happened to me once but I soldiered on because I really liked the dress. Then someone told me it was actually a maternity dress. I was 16. I was mortified. Goodbye garage-sale-find.
ReplyDeleteYeah, once I sold all my old maternity clothes at a yard sale, and despite the awkwardness of it, I pointed it out to pretty much everyone who was looking at them. Because, you know, I would want someone to do it for me.
DeleteThis is exactly why I have the day before the first Wednesday of the month marked as "must go to Kroger". Because there's no way in Hell I'm going to suffer Old People Day again until I'm getting the discount. Sorry 'bout the dress. I bet it was actually quite vintage-cute on you!!
ReplyDeleteI'm usually better at remembering, and I almost never shop on Wednesday anyway... but apparently I really did go through some sort of space/time thing this time. Or maybe I just forgot. Anyway, I'm on hyper awareness mode from now on.
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