I love this girl.
She always calls me when she’s shopping. I’ll be at work, or chilling out on the couch, and the phone will ring. “Hey! I’m in the dressing room at Target,” she’ll announce.
“So I’m trying to decide between two shirts. There’s this blue one . . . it’s kind of a sky blue with a little ruffle around the bottom. But I’m just worried that the ruffle is hitting me at the wrong spot. You know what I’m talking about? But the neckline is so pretty.”
“Tell me about the other shirt,” I’ll interject.
And then it’s my duty as the older sister in residence to help her come to a decision. Which really means that I say: “Man . . . I don’t know . . . you know what? I think you should just get both. You can always return one if you decide that you hate it once you get home.”
My solution is always to get both.
And that’s why I should not be allowed to shop frequently.
Though I love talking to Erica as she graces the distant Kentucky dressing rooms of Target or Victoria’s Secret and browses through Land’s End’s bathing suit selection, what I really love is shopping with her in person. We don’t have to tread on eggshells when trying to communicate to each other that a particular item isn’t very flattering. “The color looks like puke,” Erica may say. There’s no hemming and hawing with “well, um, maybe, like, that color . . . I don’t know . . . I mean, whaddyou think?” This makes for Greater Shopping Efficiency.
This particular trip on a sunny Tuesday afternoon involved a coffee break at Starbucks, where coffee was promptly spilled.
The store was completely out of napkins, so dishrags were brought forth.
My coffee was too bitter and Erica’s too sweet, so we paused at a convenient ledge and mixed the two.
“I’ll take pictures and you mix,” I suggested (this was a convenient way to ensure that any further spillage–and the resulting sticky hands–would not befall me).
That’s more like it.
During our meanderings, we stopped in a certain shoe store. In my experience, retail establishments aren’t too keen on customers taking pictures inside the store, but the urge welling up within me to snap some shots was simply irresistible. Thankfully, there are so many tourists out and about on the Magnificent Mile that the camera hanging from my shoulder didn’t raise any alarms or gain any special scrutiny from the staff. Feeling like a spy in some kind of thriller, I used my super-secret method to take pictures: with the camera hanging from my shoulder, I aimed from the hip and simply started pressing the shutter release button.
It was wildly entertaining.
Of course, the sheer brilliance of my super-spy technique caused me to go into fits of giggles.
I probably laugh more–and harder–with my sisters than with anyone else on earth.
Come back soon, Erica!
