Cute and perky twenty-something salesgirls wield a certain power over middle-aged mom shoppers. No one can make you feel quite as old as they can.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, my daughter can make me feel older than dirt. At one time, she even thought I was around when Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag, but she’s my kid. We’ve got the unconditional love thing going on. Me and the salesgirl have nothing between us except some overly bright fluorescent lights. She was probably being born when I was taking a final exam in college. She’s got her whole life before her, while I have Depends and Fixodent in my future.
Since we live a distance from civilization, I try to save gas and combine trips to the stores. I don’t run out for a gallon of milk unless we need eggs and bread too. You get the idea – conserve gas, time, and my overall sanity.
I had a bag clothes that needed to be dropped of at a thrift store, so I figured I’d drop them off when we went out to eat on my birthday, my forty-first birthday.
There’s this new little thrift store where all the clothes are sorted by color, and they pay cash for gently used clothes. Since I have a few things that don’t really fit into the life of my wardrobe right now, I figured I’d trade up – cash for clothes.
We stopped at this thrift store and the cute, young, blond salesgirl took my bag from me. She had me fill out a form and told me she’d look over my clothes. I browsed, and my daughter found a dress to try on. Before I knew it, the salesgirl was calling me over to the counter.
She looked at me like a teenage girl looks at her really uncool mom, and she said, “We are only taking two items. Your clothes are really too mature for our store.”
One of the items she took was a dress my daughter outgrew.
Forty was fabulous. Really.
Forty-one is, well, it’s mature.
Someone get me an AARP card and glass of prune juice stat.
I have officially entered the age of maturity.
At least I didn’t grow that full beard of kinky hair and have my eyelids suddenly sag down to my chin when I hit forty. I am thankful for that.
Fun side-note: my daughter is 14 and I’m 41. (same numbers, see?) One of my friends tells me this will happen again when she’s 25 and I’m 52. Since I’m not a numbers person, I’ll just take her word for it, but 25 and 52?!?! Well, that just blows my mature mind.
You should have had your daughter give them the clothes… 🙂
And if it offers any hope, I looked way better at 50 than I did at 40.
You and your daughter look adorable. And what’s ironic is that you are basically dressed in the same style. Same style dress with a sweater, tights and boots. Adorable.. So, I can’t see why your clothes were too mature..
And if it makes you feel any better, a similar place (was this a chain, by chance?) rejected most of my daughter’s clothes who was in her early 20s. Was told they were *too nice*.
Love reading your blog!!
I promise I will eventually stop laughing! I love payback!