One Leg at a Time

It is tempting to state, matter-of-factly, that I went to the mall this weekend. But I fear that my submission of such a statement might mislead you into envisioning me within the confines of a vast, space-saving building packed full of commerce and its associated enterprises. Let me clear up your preconceived notions by telling you that when I say mall, you can go ahead and fill in the finger-curling air quotes around that word and take it to mean “A sad, pathetic excuse for a shopping center which features perhaps three stores of any interest, our one movie theater, the World’s Smallest Food Court and 9,647 cell phone peddlers in kiosk locations whose sole purpose is apparently to verbally accost anyone entering the state lines, browbeating them into a variety of two- or three-year contracts, even if they already own several cellular phones.”

I’m not saying I hate our “mall,” I’m just saying if given the choice between having an amateur appendectomy and shopping there, I’d probably have to ask how long I could get out of work before making an informed decision.

At one point Nik turned to me and said, “They’re having a sale on jeans at Old Navy. Two pairs for forty bucks.”

“Isn’t it ‘two pair‘ for forty bucks?”

“That’s what I said,” she replied, curling her lip a bit the way she does when she thinks I’m being dumb. I see that look a lot. “Forty bucks.”

“No,” I said, “You said ‘two pairs‘. But ‘pair’ is already plural. You don’t need to add the ‘s’.”

In addition to the lip-curly thing, she also has this very blank expression with lowered eyelids and a slight tightening of the corners of her mouth. I means, “You are the biggest dork ever.” I get that look with alarming regularity.

“Nevermind,” I added hastily.

Here’s the thing about Old Navy: You can’t beat their prices. I mean, I guess you could go to a secondhand store and wear someone else’s pants, but typically I reserve that sort of thing for metaphorical realms. The problem, of course, is that you get what you pay for which, in this case, is $20 worth of sweatshop-produced poop carefully shaped by tiny, exhausted hands to look more or less like britches. The magic of this illusion is that right up until the moment you place these paragons of duplicity into the washing machine, or any body of water for that matter, they seem like the Best Deal Ever.

Of course, after that initial washing they dissolve not entirely unlike the Wicked Witch of the West did in The Wizard of Oz. If you listen carefully you can even hear them emit tiny, pained little shrieks of misery. “What a world! What a world!” Et cetera.

Yet I keep going back, hoping in vain that this time, what I purchase won’t dissolve upon contact with Earth’s atmosphere (I’m actually looking in to a theory I have which suggests that Old Navy stores emit a specialized kind of holographic ray, or possibly they pump hallucinogens into their air circulator which would suggest that Old Navy pants do not exist at all but are instead entirely fabricated as cruel jokes designed to drain your wallet. I’ll let you know what my investigation uncovers).

As I wandered the store, glaring bitterly at the signs posted everywhere declaring the profoundly reduced prices and already fighting my internal war between Mr. Cheapskate and Mr. I’m-Nobody’s-Fool. These two guys live inside me and they quarrel constantly. Like when I see a sale at the grocery store which says, “Buy 1, Get 1 Free.” Mr. Cheapskate instantly goes, “Yeah, we gotta get that.” Mr. INF waits until I’ve reached for the second item before piping up, “Uh, do we really need this? I mean, you’re not just going to buy this because it’s on sale, are you? Because that’s how the Man wants you to shop.”

Mr. Cheapskate is fairly proud, and hates when Mr. INF is right. But sometimes there will be a retort: “Yes, but we were going to buy this anyway, and now we get a second one, free!” Mr. INF calmly replies, “Were we planning on buying two?”

“No…” Mr. Cheapskate says, suspiciously.

“Well then why are we buying more than we need? Buy one, get one free is just another way of saying ‘50% Off,’ so we might as well just get the one at half price we were going to get and not buy something we’re just going to throw away because it sounded like it might be ‘free.'” Mr. INF is very sarcastic.

Usually, Mr. Cheapskate has to concede that paying half price is better than paying full price, even if you end up with less, but he typically isn’t too happy about it. In this case however, there were strict rules for the buying of pants, which detailed plainly that while two pair(s) of pants were $40, one pair of pants was $27.00. The indication of the signage seemed to make it abundantly clear that only a single-celled organism would ever consider not buying pants in even numbers.

And despite Mr. I’m-Nobody’s-Fool screaming in my head, I actually considered purchasing some Old Navy jeans. What eventually stopped me was that their jeans aren’t just of dubious quality, but they look bad, too. I mean, what’s up with this whole “dirty jeans” look they have going on? You know, where the blue has some dingy brown-grey color mixed in so they look like jeans that someone wore camping for a week? What is that? Listen, if I wanted to wear dirty jeans, I can just wear the jeans I already have. I’m a clumsy guy: I spill a lot. Also, I’m not that tidy of a person in general so (and this may be far more information than you ever wanted) there is roughly a one-in-three chance that any time you meet me, I’m wearing pants that could have—or maybe should have—been washed already, but haven’t been. What I certainly don’t need is to pay money for pants that I didn’t even get dirty myself.

So I grumbled and complained and griped until Nikki finally stalked out of the store, exasperated. “You hate everything!” she cried. “You just can’t stand shopping! Fine, then. Next time, just tell me your size and I’ll pick your stupid pants out!”

I considered this for a long moment. “Yeah, but I’m picky, too. You’d have to get pants that I’d like.”

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