Today, my daughter and I went clothes shopping, for her. She turned 13 earlier this week, and besides having all three "High School Musical" movies on her birthday list, she also asked for gift cards to certain stores. So I have a teenager now, who is more interested in her clothes than she used to be. For the first 10-11 years, I didn't have to take her clothes shopping, and she wasn't really interested. I could go to the store and if I saw something that I thought was cute or had a "Winnie the Pooh" character on it, I could buy it, bring it home and she'd think that it was so cool. Now, she has an opinion about what she likes and what she wears. So now, even though she doesn't like it, she has to go through the racks and try things on to see how they fit and look. And I can rarely pick anything out that I think she'd like, even if it's in the Juniors dept. because what I like, she usually doesn't. So today, I'd hold up something that I thought she might like, and if she looked like she was having to think of a way to let me down gently, I quickly put it back on the rack. I did pick a few that she liked (but they didn't fit right when she tried them on). By the time we were ready to go to the fitting room, I noticed that the majority of items in the cart were bright pink (her new favorite color) She did come out of the store though with a pair of pants and 4 tops and a "High School Musical" quilt that she was very happy with. Just in time for Fall. Then we went to the local earring store geared toward selling costume jewelry to preteens & teens, and found a pair that she liked (and she knew that I would never ask to borrow them). We went to another store to look at shoes and two other stores to look at CD's.
We were only gone for about three and a half hours, and we were both exhausted. So this had me thinking back to when I was her age. When I would go and visit my grandparents (on my father's side), there would be at least one day in the visit when we would "go to town". My grandparents lived in a small town and the closest shopping mall was in the town I live in now which was close to a half hour drive away from them. On the "town days" we'd spruce up, put on our nicer clothes, and drive in to town and make a day of it. There were stores still in the downtown mall (walking from store to store was outdoors) and then there was the indoor mall. We'd manage to shop at both places. At the indoor mall, my granddad would sit in the middle of the mall on the benches with the other husbands, waiting for their wives to bring their purchases to them to take out to the car, while the wives went back to shopping. I'd almost always come home with new clothes. My parents were divorced and I lived with my mom, who didn't make alot of money, so the new clothes were always appreciated. Anyway, we would be out shopping all day, and then we'd come home at around dinnertime and my grandma would make some supper and then we'd relax in the evening.
So, after today's afternoon excursion, I started wondering, was my grandma as tired after our shopping trips, as I was today after being out for just the afternoon. If she was, she never showed it. I'll have to call her and ask her. She'll probably chuckle at me. :)
Lp
