We’ve been having some blue jeans drama lately. If you are not currently parenting a teenager, you may not have noticed that the style is to wear the very tightest jeans possible. Now, back in the olden days of the 80s, tight jeans meant lying on your back on a bed, blowing all of the air out of your body while desperately trying to tug your zipper up. These days, thanks to the splendors of stretchy fabric, jeggings are pretty comfortable once they’re on, and the biggest struggle is to get your heel through the teensy, teensy opening at the bottom of the pants leg. Once that’s done, you’re golden.
Anyway, recently M had some trouble locating jeans because I attempted to switch brands on her after something we ordered arrived with a hole in it already. But the other jeans she tried didn’t suck to her ankles and waist like a scuba suit, so they were unacceptable. I went to more trouble than I should have, really, trying to accommodate her jegging needs. Finally I said that I was done, absolutely finished, and she was tasked with ordering what she wanted online herself (which would have taken me five minutes and took her a good 20 minutes because she’s a novice). That left me with just one last errand: returning two pairs of jeans that she’d deemed unacceptable.
Then I realized that I didn’t have the receipt anymore, and since pretty much 95% of everything I return, ever, is at Target, I was shocked to discover that they couldn’t just swipe my credit card. Store exchange only: not even a gift card. Humph. I was just about to call M to see what she might like instead, and that’s when I said, hey. Wait a second. Why should she get a treat for being so fussy? And I decided that I should shop for myself.
This was tougher than I expected. Walking through the store with M in mind, I think that everything is adorable, but it turns out that there is an extraordinarily small overlap in the Venn diagram of Things That Are Awesome For An Eighth Grader and Things That Are Acceptable For A Forty-Something Woman Not Currently In Her Fitness Prime. So I walked around, trying to figure out how to use all of the exchange money on myself because I sure as heck deserved a treat more than my kid did. I grabbed a cute zippered hoodie. Then I noticed some colored jeggings that were 75% off. They were definitely beyond the bounds of what I usually wear, but I was low on jeans, myself, and besides, they were so very, very cheap. The sales were so huge, in fact, that at this point I was stumped, still trying to use up another $8. The salesgirl helpfully pointed out a pajama top that “my Mom loves.” She was trying, bless her heart. After another lap around the shop I sighed and grabbed a pair of PJ bottoms and rang myself outta there.
So then, a day or two later, I’m wearing the hoodie. M sees me, and I swear, she says something like, “Mom, what is that shirt? It looks like something I would wear. You can’t do that!” Man, was I pissed. I told her she was being rude. I told her that she was not in charge of what I wear. I refrained from telling her that I’d bought the damn thing out of spite because she was not getting any more clothes from me anytime soon.
And I kept wearing that hoodie, which is perfectly fine, and perfectly appropriate, for me to wear, dammit. So screw that.
In fact, I’m wearing the hoodie right now, you little snot.
However, I’m not sure that those colored jeggings will ever see the light of day.
