When Did I Sign Up For This?

Jay Pritchett: Where's my good underwear?
Gloria Delgado-Pritchett: The question is, why isn't all your underwear good, Jay? You make a nice living.

—Modern Family, “Family Portrait” (5/19/10)

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Saturday was the day that Wife decided that it was time to go shopping for back-to-school outfits for Wee One. She specifically wanted to go to JC Penney in order to take advantage of a sale, and since only I have a Penney’s card, that meant that I was coming along, too.

We left early in the day, in order to arrive shortly after the mall opened. It’s bad enough I have to be at the mall; worse still that I have to be there on a weekend. With any luck we can pretty much get in, get clothes and get out.

I was so naive , then.

We did get to the mall early, no problem. The first issue cropped up when it turned out that, in addition to school clothes, Wee One needed to get some underwear. Specifically, she needed to get a couple of new bras. Having me there would clearly be too traumatic (for her), so I decided to just get the hell out of there and told Wife to just call me when they were done and ready to pay. I headed down to Borders Books to take advantage of their merchandise sell-off.

I was in Borders for a little while, to the point where a sales clerk offered to take my books behind the counter while I continued shopping. It was at that point that my phone rang. “I think this means I’m done shopping,” I said, and I was right. I paid for my books ($80 for about $115 worth of stuff) and headed back to JC Penney.

Unfortunately, they weren’t done. They’d gotten the bras and a couple of other pieces, but Wife thought I wanted her to call when the bra shopping was done. We (and by “we” I mean “they”) looked through a bunch of other stuff, and then Wife decided that this would be a good time to hand me the stuff they’d picked out so that they could go pick out some more stuff. This, of course, meant that I was going to be carrying the bras, still on the hanger. Being the Good Dad that I am, I immediately walked over to a nearby window and showed them, plus the other stuff that we were purchasing, to the parking lot outside. Naturally, nobody was really within sight of this window, but it was enough to freak her out: “DAD! Get AWAY from there!”

Wife, of course, was much more practical with her “The more you freak out, the more he’s going to do it” argument, but Wee One was beyond that point. “He doesn’t have to show it to the whole store!”

“I wasn’t showing them to the store,” I protested. “I was showing them to the parking lot.”

Naturally, the longer we shopped, the busier the store got until it was just so many mothers and their tween daughters, just milling about. I really hate it when people are milling about. Usually it means that I’m not getting to where I need to go, because there are so many people just…MILLING. And they’re milling IN MY WAY. Note also that I was surrounded by mothers and daughters. The other dads were clearly much smarter than I am, having gotten their wives their own JC Penney cards and they were all, no doubt, over in Buffalo Wild Wings, eating manly foods and washing them down with huge quantities of beer, scratching and burping and, no doubt, laughing at their memories of the guy they saw standing there in Penney’s, forlornly holding his daughter’s underwear.

I will say this: the sales staff at JC Penney, at least in the White Marsh Mall, were quite pleasant that morning. They usually are. In fact, I often to go the jewelry counter at this store for two reasons: one is the sales staff, who are invariably helpful and polite, and the other is because it doesn’t seem to matter what I buy there, there’s usually some kind of sale on the item I’m buying. I rarely go to that counter to take advantage of a sale, but when I go, whatever I pick out happens to be on sale. That’s tough to beat.

I’ve already made the call to JC Penney’s credit department. Wife’s own personal card is on its way. And I’ll be eating wings and drinking beer next time they want to buy underwear there.

Comments

[funny posts]

I read this story really its very funny.