Shopping Travails

Today, I was at a cloth store buying a few clothes when I saw a girl smiling and waving at me from outside the shop. Now, it is never a good portent when you see a girl smiling and waving at you and you draw a blank when you try to remember who the hell she is and where you have seen her. This mischance was aggravated by the fact, as it turned out later, that she was alone.

I somehow managed to extract her name and the details of our last meeting by shadow-guessing. She concluded by saying that she had to buy some clothes and since I was doing the same we might as well do our shopping together. I, as a rule, do not go shopping with girls – something that used to make my ex pretty angry – but, having nothing to do (and as a way of punishing myself for forgetting people), I agreed. Before an hour was out, I was ruing this decision like anything.

These are some of the observations I made:

The first thing that irritated me was the continuous talking. Girls seem to have a more serious need for talking while shopping than that of breathing. Pretty soon she had overwhelmed me with all the information about every single friend that both of us seemed to have in common – a number which I drastically cut down when I realized that it would take me weeks to process all the data if I had acknowledged that I knew almost all of her friends. I counted at least five instances when she talked incessantly for more than 5 minutes without even glancing at the clothes that she was supposed to be buying.

Then comes the fact that nothing that the store had to offer seemed to match her expectations. If something was comfortable, it was either not fashionable enough or too fashionable by her standards. If something looked good, it was either too pricey to buy or too cheap to brag to her friends about. Every pair of jeans in the store was either too flashy or too plain.

It took her almost 2 hours and reviews of at least fifty pairs of jeans to zero in on 4 that she would try on (she had to buy only 1). Next came the trial phase (it took trials of my patience rather than the clothes).A sample excerpt of her discussion would be something like:

She: “Is it looking good on me? (This is something everybody asks, so no big deal.)
Me (hoping that she had made up her mind about this one): “Yeah…pretty good.”
She: “I guess that’s because I am wearing a light-colored shirt but most of my clothes are dark-colored. Would it go with a black top?”
Me (hoping against hope): “I guess so.”
She: “Should I tuck my shirt in? Will it look better that way?”
Me (trying to save time): “No, its OK.”
She (after spending 2 more minutes in tucking her shirt in): “Will a belt look good on this? Should I buy 1 to go along?”

By now, half of my mind was snoozing and the other half was telling me to run away from her sight as soon as possible and so I did not reply.

At the end of a very trying (pun unintended) hour she had come to a decision. That too mostly because I had told her that I would have to leave her alone because I had an important meeting. Then it turned out that the 25% discount that the store was showcasing was not applicable to The Chosen One. She bandied words with the salesman until I stepped in and promised her that I would take her to another store the next day so that she might get something she likes. The Chosen One was left lying at the counter when we departed – its destiny still in the shadows.

PS: I have absolutely no intentions of keeping my promise and I need a good excuse. PLEASE HELP!!