So you might recall, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece entitled "Wardrobe Malfunction" in which I catalogued examples of food leaping off my fork and onto any clean clothes I happen to be wearing. In the first paragraph I talked about a new-from-a-thrift-store linen shirt of which I happen to be particularly fond. Somewhat predictably, I spilled food on it when wearing it for the first time and as it turned out it had to be dry cleaned instead of laundered, this little incident ended up costing more than the shirt itself. As a result, I was particularly careful the next few times I wore it and can cheerfully report that I haven't spilled food on it since.
Instead I lost it.
While riding the train to work one morning I managed to leave this and several other perfectly serviceable shirts in a plastic bag under the seat. My plan had been to drop them at the dry cleaners near my office but as they never showed up at the Lost and Found, I can only imagine some thieving b*****d is strutting around wearing my shirts! I hope he gets as big a shock as I did the first time he gets the linen one dry cleaned. Harrumph!
In addition to the pain of losing a very nice, almost new to me shirt, this simple act of carelessness more or less cleared out my stock of work shirts. I didn't have too many to begin with and most of the ones remaining are dressy to the point where they only look good when I'm wearing a jacket and tie. Which is virtually never. So to my horror, I realized I was going to have to devote a day of my precious vacation to descend into the seventh circle of hell. I was going to have to go….clothes shopping. Dah dah daaahhhh!!!!! (If you'd had your sound turned up, you would have heard dramatic music there.)
I've never been a fan of shopping in any form. Not from the days when me dear ol' Ma used to drag me round the town of a Saturday morning. Even in the first few years after starting work when I had almost as much money as I knew what to do with, I was always more interested in using the stuff I bought than actually buying it. Now I'm married and broke, the act of shopping is just simply one more miserable task ranking up there with cleaning the gutters and washing the windows. It has to be done, but I'd much rather somebody else did it. Part of the problem is that the stuff I want to buy; kayaks and motorcycles and 12-year old malt whisky and stuff, is way out of my price range. As a general rule, if I can afford it, I don't want it.
And clothes shopping has to be the worst of all. I don't have the disposable income to drape myself in custom made garments and as my physique is not one commonly seen within the pages of GQ I have challenges finding things off the peg which come close to fitting me. Not only that, but I've always been somewhat uncomfortable in clothes stores of any type. When I was a lad, no matter how down market these places might be, they were always staffed by frighteningly intimidating super-models and as talking to pretty girls caused my face to turn beet red and my tongue to wood, the whole thing was a traumatizing experience.
My usual procedure was to shuffle in, trying to look invisible and furtively rummage through the selection. As soon as I found a garment looking vaguely similar to what everyone else was wearing, I would head straight for the check out. Fit? What's that? I was well into my twenties before I had the faintest idea of my waist or leg size. I do remember one particularly cruel salesmonster telling me "Nobody makes jeans in your size, these are the closest you're going to get". Of course I believed her and walked around wearing jeans half way up my calves for years before learning that several manufacturers make jeans in my size, it's just many stores don't carry them.
But anyway, teenage trauma notwithstanding, new shirts were needed so new shirts have to be bought. Although Dear Wife has done a sterling job over the years in keeping me equipped with skivvies and socks, and was responsible for the purchase of the aforementioned linen shirt, when it comes to clothes buying I generally like to at least have a say in things. So, with a heavy heart I headed down the hill to the big city, check book at the ready.
And I have to admit; it wasn't all that bad. Even though Dear Wife had her own list of things to buy, many only vaguely benefiting me. Even though we left the house at 9:30 and didn't get home until after 6. And even though my bank account is in urgent need of a massage with some liniment, it was about as trauma free as a visit to over a dozen stores could be. I didn't hyperventilate. I didn't start swinging punches. And I even used the fitting rooms a couple of times.
Oh, I'll confess there was a spell where we made the mistake of taking the scenic route to look at an upscale neighborhood and found ourselves trapped in an endless series of red lights which would have taxed the patience of someone far more patient than me. And the temperature in some of the stores could have been a good 20 degrees lower and still been sub-tropical. And a number of screaming kids were in urgent need of the duct tape treatment. And I did get a shade cranky on one of the freeways towards the end when nobody would let me merge. But other than that, it was a comparatively pain free day.
And I came home with several new shirts. And a pair of pants. And a pair of shoes. Oh and a snazzy looking pair of shorts too. Which I think is more new clothes than I've had in one day since I was last kitted out to return to school. So now if I can just refrain from dripping food on them, or leaving them on the train, I should be looking pretty sharp for a while.
We'll see.
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