Last night, after I got off work, Pop and I went to the local Mall. We went with the hope of making a specific purchase, and did, in fact buy the item we wanted/needed/thought he’d die without.
But it turned out we had more fun looking at other shoppers. And wandering about. And making unsavory comments to each other. We are, collectively, very rude.
We were in the Men’s Clothing and Accessories section of a department store. He holds up the most absurd looking tie I’ve ever seen and I start to giggle – Pop being the most conservative dresser since the beginning of time. It went downhill from there. He starts trying on hats. I agree that, out in the sun on a golf course, he probably should have protection for his face and neck. He picks out this enormous straw hat, plops it on his head – it slides down over his ears – and he looks like a mushroom!! Then one of those little caps where he looks like a newsboy in 1935. I continue to laugh. He works his way over to the Men’s Colognes area. Sniffing and testing. Got a good whiff of one and turns to me with a gagging expression on his face, eyes crossed, just as a Sales Clerk comes over and says, “May I help you, sir?” He quickly looks her straight in the face and says, “You don’t have much trouble with mosquitoes around here, do you?” The woman is still standing there, I think, looking either bewildered or very annoyed. We moved on rather quickly after that. A display of “As Seen on TV” items, among them a flashlight that lights forever – all you do is shake it. Well, none of them work. So he starts shaking them. You have to shake them for like 5 minutes or so – which, in an emergency, I guess is better than a flashlight with dead batteries, but he shakes the flashlight until he gets it to work. But the beam is weak. So he starts shaking another. Now I have a low threshold for boredom, and its starting to kick in at about the 8th flashlight he’s dancing around with. (Key that Shake! Shake!Shake! music now) After all this carrying on, he decides that we don’t need any of them. I’m hoping I don’t pee in the middle of the store. We head towards the exit, thru the candy department. He notes that there are 3 customers ahead of us. Each one weighs at least twice the amount of he and I put together. I’m hoping this observation does not occur to him until after we leave the area; hoping that, if it does, he keeps his mouth shut. (Still shuddering over the day when my first husband thoughtfully asked a rather rotund lady when her baby was due, speaking to a fat but not pregnant person!)
We wandered into housewares, kitchenware. I thought about putting in a Change-of-Address with the Post Office, cause I knew we were gonna be here a long, long time. Pop likes to cook, and this is one of his finest qualities. That man knows his way around the kitchen, and is a master outside at the grill. For whatever reason, he was looking at sets of wine glasses. True, we have a mix-and-match group, the leftover pieces of probably 6 sets that he or I bought over the years. I don’t think we have 3 that look like each other. I’m trying to talk him out of any purchase in this department. First, the cupboards home are FULL beyond belief; we should go home and purge the crap first before bringing in more stuff. Second – were I to purchase a set of 4 damn wine glasses in the price range he was looking at, I will bet the house that I will trip while getting into the car, fall ass over ear with a thud, and shatter the whole lot of them. Then he has to examine, closely, every frying pan in the store, and tell me what would be best prepared in each specific one, based on width, depth and interior surface. Having already spent much of the last 40 years in a kitchen myself, my appreciation of the information he’s generously imparting can only be demonstrated through a gesture. You know the one.
We continue wandering. I see a set of coffee mugs that I like, with blue patternwork. Pfaltzgraff Blue Meadow. Pop makes a comment that the dishes that we are currently using, unbreakable Corelle, have a blue pattern on them. While I agree, they don’t have this new gorgeous pattern on them, and I wasn’t looking at a whole set of new dishes – I was just thinking of 2 pretty, decorative mugs. He notes that we have more coffee mugs now than we have room to store, and the only way we can keep them all out of sight is if part of the collection is dirty and in the dishwasher. OH, how I hate to admit it when he has a point. Guess that’s another cupboard that I need to go through and “file” some of the contents.
So the mugs are not bought. But not forgotten. And the day may come when “unbreakable” isn’t the highest quality I look for in dinnerware.
And there’s a Pfaltzgraff Outlet Store not too far away! Like I need an excuse to go down to the beach! “The sun is shining” is reason enough.
And so it continued, through most of this large store. He cringed at the prices on the “rubber shoes,” as he calls them, although I thought one pair was in order. Darn it, they sure are comfortable. He grabbed me by the hand and practically dragged me through the Fine Jewelry department, afraid that I would see something there that I liked, or a pair of things. Wanted to sit on the all the furniture over there in the back. I hoped he wouldn’t want to bounce and jump on all the bedding.
I think he does this just so I won’t drag him on these shopping trips too often.
And as we were nearing the exit, he started perking up. Near the Sporting Goods section, oddly enough.
This is what we finally bought, a “BagBoy” cart thingie to haul his golf clubs and bag around the course.
As a Father’s Day gift, a wee bit early.
For the man that technically is not a father at all. Not to my 3 kids, not to any. That little biological fact didn’t seem to matter, when #1 had an “issue” and needed some help, or when #2 needed all his stuff hauled up to a 3rd story dorm room again and again, or needed semesters of tuition paid, or when #3 moved in, bag, baggage, troubles and twins. And that biology stuff didn’t matter when he was honored to stand as Best Man for #1, stood proudly when #2 graduated from the university, or when he danced with #3 on her wedding day, long, white gown swirling about them both. It doesn’t seem to matter, either, to two little boys standing at the window, watching as “Pop” backs his truck up the driveway. They’re giddy that Pop is home. And the dog’s so excited that she pees on the floor!
What matters more than biology is who you are and what you’ve done, for my children and for their children. Happy Father’s Day.
