Monday, August 15, 2005

Scooby Doo and the case of the Flip Flop Ninja

Today was my kid's first day of school and, like the bad parent I am, I waited until this morning to see if his school uniform clothes fit him - and the shorts, of course, didn't fit him, so the poor kid had to wear long pants, in motherfreaking August.

In an effort to make up for this huge imposition, after we dropped him off, we decided to pick him up a few new pairs of shorts - easy enough, right? It's motherfreaking August.

First stop:

the mall by the house
some random department store I've never heard of? nope
Macy's? nah
Old Navy? not so much
JC Penney? don't think so
Gap Kids? not quite

By this time my feet are starting to hurt from walking 77 miles around this mall in my paper thin 2 year old flip flops

Next stop:

The only Target (that I'm aware of) in town - strike out

Everywhere we went, we were told that there were no more shorts in stock because they were putting out the winter clothes - winter clothes!!! in motherfreaking August!!! I can't help but think that perhaps these large national chains may need to do some region specific marketing - for instance, how many gortex jackets do you think Target really sells in Phoenix (or Savannah, for that matter)? I'm betting not so much - but shorts, hell, you can wear shorts all year long - maybe that would be something to keep in stock... just a thought, of course...

Finally, at the second (and final) mall in Savannah, we found several pairs of plain, navy, no-additional-pockets shorts - yee haw!

Isn't it weird how sometimes, I'll tell these long, convoluted stories and they have a punchline or at least a couple of funny bits, but sometimes they never seem to arrive at a point? It would seem like this was one of the latter, no? Actually, that's true - I just kind of wanted a venue for the fact that it's lame for stores in tropical climates to follow the same merchandise stocking schedules as stores in colder climates

but the weird thing that happened today - was at Target, I decided to pick up a new pair of black flip flops (of which, unlike shorts, they had quite the surplus) because my old flip flops were really old, really thin, really torn up by my cat and really killing my feet - So I bought my $2 pair and put them on out in the car (because I'm not qute white trash enough to put on my new flip flops right there in the store) - walking to the next mall, my husband looks over at my new shoes and asks if they're better than the old.

"Yeah, I guess," I say, scrunching up my face in the way that really means "No, not at all"

"What's wrong with them?" he asks.

"They neither flip nor flop when I'm walking. Half the reason for wearing flip flops is to hear that little 'flip-flop' when you're walking."

He had the look on his face that everyone who is reading this has - the kind of "WTF"-look that so many people have around me.

"Seriously!" I insist. "They're silent, they're like ninja flip flops, it's weird."

"Uh... yeah... really weird."