zenith versus the mall

[zenithblue]

Once or twice a year, I go to the mall. I know this is not a hip thing to admit to. But I can’t help it. I have an iconoclastic ass. There is one store in all the world that sells reasonably priced jeans that suit my ass. That store is located in the Lloyd Center Mall, Portland, Oregon. I’m not kidding you, I’m the Marco Polo of blue jeans. I’ve traveled far and wide to find something that doesn’t make me look like a sausage stuffed into a lumpy casing. The mall is the last recourse of the white girl ghetto booty.

 

One of the reasons I hate the mall is the hard sell. I have an irrational fear of salespeople. This is one of the many joys of shopping at Goodwill or Buffalo Exchange: never once will you find a salesperson shoving items at you, asking if you’d like the store credit card, telling you the latest styles. You go in and flip through racks (and like Kelly Link, I’ve always found you can tell the color of the item by feel at a Goodwill). Anything you find is treasure. Luck-driven shopping. Which works great if you don’t need something, but if you need pants, Goodwill will probably end in tears. At least in my experience.

 

In any case, last night I was finally forced to make a mall-trip. I grabbed some jeans off the rack, tried them on, and then approached a salesperson.

“Do these draw up?” I asked, indicating the jeans.

 

She stared at me, as the sage would have it, like a dog being shown a card trick.

 

“You know, like, shrink? In the length?” I prodded.

 

“When you do what?”

 

Wow. “Um, when you wash them?”

 

She blinked a few times. Her eyeshadow was white and painted on thick.

 

“Well, when you wash them and dry them, or just when you wash them?”

 

I almost dropped the pants and walked out, but then I remembered that I’d have to do laundry if I did that.

 

“Either one. Whatever. Do they shrink, is what I’m asking.”

 

“No, not really. No.”

 

I nodded. I went back to try on a few more pair. I looked at the earrings on sale. I pawed through a sales rack. Finally, I went to get rung out.

 

The girl at the counter, a different girl, younger, beamed at me. And I knew what she’d ask before she even asked it, because they all ask, they all try to sell it to you.

 

“Would you like to save fifteen percent on your purchase today by signing up for a credit card?”

 

Usually I respond with a nice, firm no. That ends it. But for whatever reason, last night, it didn’t occur to me to do so. I’m not sure if it was my irritation at the crappy customer service (i.e. orneriness), or if it was a panicked reaction (i.e. neurosis). Maybe I just didn’t want to sound illogical—what fool wouldn’t want to save fifteen percent?—but something lead me down the treacherous path of deceit.

 

“Oh, no. I don’t live here, so I really shouldn’t.”

 

“Where do you live?”

 

Where does this store not exist, where where where? The only place I could say for sure was

 

“Alaska.”

 

“Really!” She stared at me in amazement. “Why would you want to live there?”

 

How many times have I been asked that, or asked that myself, in my life? But honestly…if you were trying to sell someone fifty bucks’ worth of pants, would you insult their hometown?

 

“Oh, it’s not so bad. It’s nice in the summer.”

 

“I heard it doesn’t get dark! How do you sleep!”

 

I didn’t. One of many reasons I live in Portland.

 

“Oh, you just kind of nap a little towards midnight. But you get a lot done during the day! And it makes up for the months of darkness. You sleep in winter.”

 

“Wow! So what are you doing down here?”

 

“I’m visiting my aunt for a few weeks.”

 

Almost all my aunts, by the way, live in…ALASKA.

“Oh, wow.” She thought for a minute. “Maybe you can get a card, and then tell your aunt to buy things for you and send them up to you.”

 

I laughed, hoping my laughter would show her this was a stupid idea. She waited expectantly.

 

“Yeah, um, I don’t want to let my aunt buy me clothes. She’s a high school math teacher.”

 

Blank look.

 

“And she dresses like one.” By now I was rummaging for payment. I realized my debit card would tip her off that I lived here, since it’s from a local bank, so I pulled out my credit card.

 

“Can I see your I.D.?”

 

I started to flip to my driver’s license in my wallet, and then froze.

 

I had an Oregon I.D.

 

I felt, for a split second, like I might barf. The profundity of the embarrassment surprised me. I am twenty seven, relatively bright, usually caustic enough to snark my way through the mall, and this skinny no-butt no-manners eighteen-year-old blonde girl had me trapped in my own web of lies! Oh, the evil influence of the mall! Everything was topsy turvy!

 

But then, inspiration hit me.

 

“Oh my god,” I said, gasping. “I don’t have it. I must have left it in my coat pocket after the flight.”

 

“That’s okay, I trust you!” She swiped my card grandly and beamed at me. I tried to find some signifier in her face indicating that she was being sarcastic. I know well the customer service art of cheerily complying while putting all the force of your hatred behind your cheer, so that if they are paying attention at all they can see your scorn behind your big paste-on grin.

 

If she was doing that, though, she was very subtle, because to all appearances she was happy to ring me up.

 

Feeling impressed with my own ingenuity, and maybe a little disturbed by the extents of my neurosis (and also a little less safe in the identity-theft department), I gathered up my new jeans. I left that dark circle of hell behind me.

 

For the record: a firm no, it turns out, is probably a lot less trouble.

Comments

[bluescissors76.livejournal.com]

In the one woman's defense, I've never heard the phrase "draw up," but I don't think I'd stare at someone blankly if I was a customer-service-type person and I wask asked that question.

I'm with you with the annoying hard sale! My mom also gives out fake names and numbers when people ask her for such things. She gets a lot of joy out of making stuff like that up.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured "draw up" was some funky regional thing I picked up from my mom (who is from South Carolina, originally, and actually pronounces it "drawr up"). What really floored me about the interaction was when I asked if they shrink and she said "When you do what?"

Are there things besides laundry that shrink clothing?

[bluescissors76.livejournal.com]

That machine from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, perhaps.

[scribbleeso.livejournal.com]

Let's look on the bright side... at least you got the mall trip out of the way before the holiday season started!

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

It's so true.

I went Christmas shopping at this particular mall a few years ago, which I will never do again. The most vivid memory I have of the experience was this guy in a motorized scooter that did laps around the entire mall. He had this little mechanical speaker thing that would play the first few bars of "Jingle Bells" over and over and over. "Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, jingle all the way." And it'd stop there. No "oh what fun." No "one horse open sleigh." Just those first opening bars. Over and over. Over and over.

The security guard told us he was there every single day, and that his little speaker thing had different seasonal tunes. Apparently we were fortunate to miss out on "Peter Cottontail."

[drawgirl.livejournal.com]

No! No! It was worse than that! It didn't have the 'jingle all the way'!! You'd wait for it, sure, but after a pause, it'd just go 'jingle bells, jingle bells' again and again. It'd always end on that sort of 'to be continued' note and it WOULD NEVER CONTINUE!!!

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

...regardless, I felt a little like Roger Rabbit. "Shave and a haircut...shave and a haircut...shave and a haircut..."

[somethinghead.livejournal.com]

That is amazing and amazingly ridiculous.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Why thank you.

I haven't decided if my life is more like a Kafka story or a Beckett play yet. Someone with a good grasp of absurdity.

[kiwikat.livejournal.com]

i followed this link from choogy's journal. i love your writing style! would you mind terribly if i add you?

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

With a hello like that, how can I say no? :)

*doing the little welcome dance as I push the friend-button*