It Might Be a Little Too Small
I was standing in line – my arms full of goodies waiting for them to tell me ” Register 2 is now available”. You would think by now that I would never go into a TJ Maxx without a cart but once again I am caught up in a feeding frenzy of purchases and my arms are overloaded. Ali, my mom and I went to TJ’s to exchange a dress for my mother. We weren’t there to really buy anything else but you know how that goes. I have lost both my mother and Ali in the store and the announcement comes over the loud speaker that they are closing in 10 minutes. So, as I stand there waiting to pay, Ali comes up to me and says “Grandma needs you in the dressing room”. I say “can’t you help her - I am about to check out” “No” she says “You have to go help her – she needs you”. “Fine, here’s all my stuff, and a credit card – I’ll be back”. As I approach the dressing room I see my mom at the entrance – wearing some crazy polka dot thing. I look at her and I say “No-that’s doesn’t look so good, I wouldn’t get it” and she replies “I may have to get it, because I can’t get out of it”. I look at her and say ”You can’t get out of it?” ”No- I have been trying and so I had you paged- didn’t you hear them calling for you”. Oh this isn’t going to be good. First of all – if you have to get stuck in something – make it something nice – not some crazy polka dot dress. Second, crazy people should not wear crazy outfits – it only confirms what people already think about you. You should only wear mono-tone, soothing colors with no pattern. This is why I only wear black, white or blue and no prints. Know thyself. So, back to my crazy mom. I tell her that we need to get back into her dressing room and I sort of lead her gently back that way with my hand, as they are now announcing that the store is closing in 5 minutes. Instead of walking – she shuffles, just like a penguin. I look down to see why she is walking so weirdly and I see that there, around her ankles, are her pants. “Mom, why are you pants down there?” “Well” she says “I didn’t want to take them all the way off just to try on the dress”. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. We finally get to her dressing room. OK, I tell her to put her hands over her head and I then lift the dress up. It gets stuck, on her boobs. I yank, she says “wait”, I yank again, she says “ouch”. I stop pulling and she lifts the tight part up and over her breasts which were getting in the way of progress. Then she attempts to pull the dress off by crisscrossing her arms as I lift upwards. We get stuck again. She says “stop you are killing me” and I tell her ” You better hope not or you will be laid out in this god awful dress- because once Regor mortis sets in, it will never come off you”. “Now uncross your arms and hold them straight up.” Finally, with one giant yank – I practically lift her off the ground and the dress comes flying upwards. Thank god. “Now pull up your pants and put on your shirt because they are about to lock us in here for the night.” She is sweating so much at this point that she is dripping wet – I really think she thought she was wearing that dress for the rest of her life. She says “forget my shirt, I will just throw on my jacket.” ”Mom – the jacket has no buttons or front closure – you have to wear your shirt.” She looks at me and says “shit”. Now we try to get her silky shirt on over her sweating body and it gets all twisted up around her shoulder and neck and because she is so sweaty it won’t pull down and she has one arm in and one not. And she looks like a twisted pretzel. Now I say “shit”. Finally, we get her dressed. The dressing room girl gives me the old eye ball roll look as we leave the dressing rooms. We walk out to meet Ali at the front door and she is laughing and says ” You see why you had to go, you didn’t want to miss that did you?”
We laughed all the way home, with the air conditioning on, because my mother was still sweating.
Faux Farm girl
Ann