It's Back to School Time

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2.Aug.2003

It’s almost time for the wee ones to head back to the adoring arms of their underpaid teachers and the frightening Friday surprise lunch at all school cafeterias across our great land. It’s also time for back to school shopping, or what I prefer to call, shopapalooza from somewhere south of heaven. Oh, just shoot me now before the excitement gets too much for me.

I have twenty-two years of combined shopapalooza under my belt. You’d expect that with four children I’d pretty much be resigned to my fate when summer is nearing it’s end. I’m not. Each year it ambushes me before the barbecue grill has cooled down and my sunburn begins to fade. I’m like Mr. Short Term Memory Man on SNL. I never see it coming.

It’s not the amount of money I have to spend, mostly because my in-laws inherited a generosity-gene that forces them to buy my children the lions share of their back to school clothing; no, it’s the fighting and the whining.

My kids fight, I whine. It’s a really great combo and it’s coming to a dressing room near you soon. I’m pretty much ok with the three younger children in grade school, they’re easy. It’s my teenage daughter that gives me stress-induced amnesia year after year. Each year is worse than the last.

Here is an actual conversation I had with my teenage daughter last week. She was in a dressing room alone because she’s too old to let me see that she actually has a body. I’m out in the hall dodging other shoppers pushing past me to get to the changing rooms. (Note: she is only fourteen years old)

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I am now garnering sympathetic looks from most of the other mother’s standing out in the hall waiting for their daughters to try on something. I know she doesn’t hate me per se; it’s the fact that I’m refusing to allow her to use Britney Spears as a clothing role model. Personally I don’t believe Britney wears enough clothes to be considered a role model in the area of clothing. I think she takes her fashion tips from nude mannequins and subscribes to the ‘less is better’ school of dressing. Neither of which thrills the hearts of Mothers everywhere, who are now forced into conversations like this with their daughters during shopapalooza from somewhere south of heaven:

This is where the conversation degenerates into me whining about how I gave birth to her, bathed her, diapered her, there’s nothing she has that I haven’t seen and how come she can show her panties to other fourteen year old girls but her Mom isn’t allowed to see her without full body armor on? I don’t mention the fact that giving birth to her and her three siblings ruined my chances of ever wearing a thong-anything, which thought causes my voice to crack in mid-whine.

I finally regain my composure enough to point out a lovely denim outfit I think would look fabulous on her. For my effort I am rewarded with a look that would take paint off a car in one shot. I remember going school shopping with my Mom when I was a teenager. She had the worst fashion sense ever! I just don’t understand why my daughter is treating me like my fashion I.Q is as bad as my Mother’s used to be. It’s not, honest.

School can’t come soon enough for me, and this particular shopapalooza better end before I have a nervous breakdown. What’s she going to ask for during next year’s shopapalooza? It better not be those extremely low riding jeans because then everyone will be able to see her rhinestone thong undies.

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