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When is a
shopping trip not about shopping? Well, when it’s not about shopping.
I
am not sure how my daughter, 13, became such an avid shopper. One of the things
I love most about my wife is that she shops like a man, which is to say that she
goes to buy. Many a fellow seeking a mate wants cooks and looks; that’s fine, I
appreciate both, but give me a woman who can buy a winter wardrobe on her lunch
break. My daughter can barely select lunch on her lunch break.
She doesn’t get it from me either. I shop for clothes two or three times
annually in order to keep up a certain standard at work, otherwise I could last
years on two pairs of jeans and a few favorite shirts. I have a theory that the
good Lord designed men to put on pounds over the years so we’ll have duds in the
closet purchased since 1972, though I may still have a few leisure suits that
would fit if I can hold the line on the Christmas goodies. Sure I’d look goofy,
but it would spare me a shopping trip.
I
suspect the real culprit in the girl’s shopping mania is generation-skipping
genes, and I lay the blame squarely at the feet of her grandmothers. This was
our third annual father-daughter pre-Christmas drive to San Francisco, the 9th
overall for the group we go with. Girl-Child informed me this summer that she
expects us to attend the group’s annual campout until she is 40 but has put no
such limit on the San Francisco jaunt. Her future husband may have an opinion
on these little intrusions, though if he’s wise it will be “Have a nice time.”
She tells me it’s a prerequisite.
There’s a different dynamic to the shopping trip than with the other things we
do together. This is her territory while I am clearly a foreigner, a stranger
in a strange land. Though she’s not exactly in control, I do find myself
feeling a bit dependent, like a tourist to his translator. It’s part of the fun
for both of us, a visit to a corner of her world that, in the end, has little to
do with the things in the windows. One can only do so much damage on a $20
budget, but the insight and connection is without price.
“Dad’s Day With Girl-Child” is only half of the story; “Mom’s Day With
Boy-Child” is the rest. When I have one offspring on a group outing she snags
the other for something a little less formal. And while the sponsored trips
come with at least a loose structure (like a beginning and an end), my wife
tangos to a different beat.
Our kids learned long ago that when you ride with Mom you ride with the wind.
Time has no meaning, plans are for sissies, destination is but a whim, and maps
are for finding your way out, not in.
If I’m at the helm and we plan to go from “Point A” to “Point B,” then from A to
B we shall go. My wife takes a somewhat broader view of the geographical
alphabet, which in this was case spelled A-S-H-L-A-N-D. My son had never been
to Oregon, hadn’t dreamed he’d end up there when he awoke that morning, and
seemed a little bewildered that night by the fact that he had been there.
I
completely understand, having had more than one weekend drive end up in places I
couldn’t find again if I tried. It’s almost like my favorite scene from “The
Wizard of Oz:” you don’t know exactly where you are or how you got there, except
in real life you can click your heels all the livelong day and you’re not going
home or anyplace else until she’s good and ready. When I teased my son that he
was lucky he didn’t wind up in Canada, all my wife could muster was “I got
tired.”
Two journeys, two routes, one purpose. Now if I could only squeeze into those
leisure suits …
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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