Our son is leaving for college in 4 weeks. My wife informed me that he needs clothes.
It must be a chromosomal thing. To a woman, every event in life is a good reason to spend money.
But, to be fair, I had noticed this myself. It seems that he is either dressed in wrestling shorts and T-shirt or really nice duds from Banana Republic. Rarely is there a happy medium.
She mentioned that she just happened to have a 15% off coupon at Kohl’s.
How could I resist that?
I’m skeptical of such “sales”. When I go into a store, which is a rare event, the sale prices don’t seem all that low to me.
“If that shirt is 50% off, I want to meet the person who paid full price”
My wife has even started to come around to my side. She has noticed that stores mark prices up before such sales.
My wife and son went in as soon as we got there. My youngest daughter and I had a choice, sit in the truck in 96º heat or join them.
As I got out of the truck, my daughter asked, “Are we going in?”
“Do you want to sit out here and bake?”
“No. I just didn’t know we were going in.”
“Well, honey, there are only two options. Either we go in or we sit out here and bake.”
“But you never go shopping…”
We went in. I had a small wave of shopping nausea hit me.
My wife greeted me by showing me this totally EMO sweatshirt with these cute little thumb slots in the ends of the sleeves that my son wanted. My skin started crawling. I felt like John Candy and Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
“Dude, are you unsure?”
“About what?”
“Your gender! Why don’t you go to the dressing room and do a quick check.
“But Dad, it a Tony Hawk! He a famous skateboarder!”
” He should have stuck with that. I ain’t payin’ for that thing. No way.”
This was not heading in the right direction. So, I dove in. I actually started shopping! But, I promise you that it was strictly self-defense!
I wasn’t having much luck. The prices were nothing to write home about.
Then I found the discount racks!!!
60% off…70% off…80% off! I was looking around for the 100% off rack! Now you’re talking!
I pulled 20 shirts off the racks for him to go try on. I figured we would make it like fishing…catch a bunch, keep the good ones and throw the rest back in the water.
Let’s just say that my wife was less than thrilled with my method.
Howevuh…
we walked out with 8 nice shirts for $80!!!
and my daughter was asking me if I could go shopping with her!
