Generational Shopping
15/6/08 14:31![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsMy grandmother and my aunts, from what I'm told, liked nothing better than to pull on their white gloves, fluff up their hats, and spend a Saturday shopping. I used to like it myself, before prices and my figure outstripped my imagination and my wallet. I still enjoy shopping for the right thing for some purpose, looking at paper or fabric or kitchen ware. But shopping with the kids...
When I was Avocado's age we bought a number of clothes I hated, because my mother loved them and I didn't have the courage to say "Ick, no." I was in my late 20s before I got over that (I remember coming home from somewhere with a brown sheath that my mother had bought me, and weeping because it would have looked swell on her, but was utterly unlike anything I would wear, just another sign of the extent to which my mother had mapped herself over me"). So with both of the girls I tend to try to hang back, tender the odd suggestion, and retreat immediately if displeasure is expressed. Life is too short to wear clothes you loathe. With Sarcasm Girl this is fairly easy--she sometimes has to be talked into spending money ("Is this okay? I mean, the price? Really? Oh, good.") but which she has a fairly clear set of criteria, she's not brand-driven, and she's flexible.
Avocado, on the other hand, is brand-driven. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it complicates matters. And often she has an idea in her tiny head about what she wants, or she gets distracted ("Oooh! Shiny!") and a relatively simple shopping list can take forever to fulfill. We left the house at 11:20 today and got home about fifteen minutes ago (that would be 2:20). In between we got a camelback hydration backpack (not on the list), sheet stretchers (on the list), a one-piece bathingsuit (on the list), three T-shirts (not on the list), a pair of flip flops, a pair of tennis sneakers, and a pair of Crocs (actually they're called Mumbahz by Crocs--the less expensive line, because Mama refuses to spend $32 for a pair of neoprene water shoes). The not-on-the-list items Avocado paid for herself, out of her leftover money from her trip to St. Louis. But the wear and tear on my sense of humor and my backbone was considerable. After a long enough time in Target or DSW or most of the stores we visited today, I get mall-brain--the desperate yearning to be somewhere else, coupled with a cloudy sense that my brain isn't working properly.
We didn't get the hiking boots that were the most important item. Finally decided, in the interest of maintaining our relationship, to buy hiking boots in the next couple of days and mail them to camp (the duffles go off tomorrow via UPS). I'm back on the icepack, reeling just a little.
When I was Avocado's age we bought a number of clothes I hated, because my mother loved them and I didn't have the courage to say "Ick, no." I was in my late 20s before I got over that (I remember coming home from somewhere with a brown sheath that my mother had bought me, and weeping because it would have looked swell on her, but was utterly unlike anything I would wear, just another sign of the extent to which my mother had mapped herself over me"). So with both of the girls I tend to try to hang back, tender the odd suggestion, and retreat immediately if displeasure is expressed. Life is too short to wear clothes you loathe. With Sarcasm Girl this is fairly easy--she sometimes has to be talked into spending money ("Is this okay? I mean, the price? Really? Oh, good.") but which she has a fairly clear set of criteria, she's not brand-driven, and she's flexible.
Avocado, on the other hand, is brand-driven. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it complicates matters. And often she has an idea in her tiny head about what she wants, or she gets distracted ("Oooh! Shiny!") and a relatively simple shopping list can take forever to fulfill. We left the house at 11:20 today and got home about fifteen minutes ago (that would be 2:20). In between we got a camelback hydration backpack (not on the list), sheet stretchers (on the list), a one-piece bathingsuit (on the list), three T-shirts (not on the list), a pair of flip flops, a pair of tennis sneakers, and a pair of Crocs (actually they're called Mumbahz by Crocs--the less expensive line, because Mama refuses to spend $32 for a pair of neoprene water shoes). The not-on-the-list items Avocado paid for herself, out of her leftover money from her trip to St. Louis. But the wear and tear on my sense of humor and my backbone was considerable. After a long enough time in Target or DSW or most of the stores we visited today, I get mall-brain--the desperate yearning to be somewhere else, coupled with a cloudy sense that my brain isn't working properly.
We didn't get the hiking boots that were the most important item. Finally decided, in the interest of maintaining our relationship, to buy hiking boots in the next couple of days and mail them to camp (the duffles go off tomorrow via UPS). I'm back on the icepack, reeling just a little.