Tuesday, October 2, 2007

The Third Circle of H-E-L-L

...has got to be Payless Shoes at 4 p.m. on an afternoon when one child had a truncated nap and the other, due to extracurricular activities, has not been home for 8.5 hours.

Older Girleen pirouettes happily in the "flower girl shoes" I've suggested for an upcoming wedding (they should be white to match her flower girl dress, but the white ones don't fit, so they're black, what the hey), while her younger sister (clearly the pop culture maven of the family) makes a beeline for the only shoes in the store that hit high on the unsuitability index on all counts: they're sandals (the wedding is the weekend before Halloween), they light up, AND they are covered with disney princesses.

Nooooooo, she wails. I NEED princesses... Wails as we try on a nice pair of dress up shoes, wails as we cram her feet back into her original shoes, wails as we walk down the aisle and back to the register.

—Oh, the salesclerk says, addressing Younger Girleen and nodding wisely. I know why you're crying! Well, you just tell Grandma to come back on Thursday when we have two-for-one, and she can buy them for you then.

I have just been mistaken for my children's grandmother.

3 comments:

A.M. Dellamonica said...

Oh, that sounds very demoralizing. I hope the event makes up for this prelude.

jesswynne said...

Eep. Estupido Payless clerk. feh. Really, that's just ridiculous (unless of course she herself grew up in a culture/family where women give birth pretty much as girls, so a woman over 35 is of grandmotherly age).

Bernadette said...

Ouch!