There are things in life that are fun. Crosswords are fun. Watching movies can be fun. Playing football is fun. Drinking with friends is fun. There are other things in life that should be fun, but aren’t. Shopping for underwear with my wife should be fun. Society tells me that it should be an enjoyable experience. It’s not.
It’s probably my fault, as most of these things are. I am missing the part of my brain that allows me to access my imagination while the process is going on, meaning that I just get bored really quickly. Unless Holly’s actually going to model the underwear, everything starts to look the same after a while. She tells me that this particular pair of panties are nice. I can’t help but think that they look much like the same pair that she was holding three minutes ago. Sure, I can see that a certain bra is going to look good as she’s holding it near her chest, but eventually my brain tells me that she’s just picking up different coloured pieces of fabric and putting them down again. My input moves from the normal husbandy platitudes (“Yeah, they look great, darling”) to just barely remaining conscious of where I am and what I’m doing (“Wha? Yeah, sure, they go better with your eyes.).
It’s supposed to be a sexy thing, you know? Helping the wife pick out some new underwear? No. Without wanting to horrify anyone that’s reading this by revealing too many details, my wife is beautiful. She’s sexy. Her underwear? Meh. I think she looks awesome in anything. Granted, some things more than others, but I’m not that interested in getting involved in the process of buying them. As I’ve said many times before, no woman has ever taken her clothes off and had a guy turn her down because her underwear was unattractive. We like to focus on the bigger picture. And the bigger picture usually doesn’t involve underwear, ifYouKnowWhatI’mSayingandIThinkYouDo.
The reason I mention this is that I made the mistake of accompanying her when she went shopping for some nylon tights today. In Holly’s defence, we only went to one store and we spent what must’ve been a maximum of 8 minutes in the store. The only way the eight minutes could’ve felt longer would’ve been if I had been forced to have a rectal exam while waiting at the checkout.
I understand that there’s a very specific type of nylon tights that’s she was looking for. They had to be sheen, and black and of a certain length and size (my wife is very tall). They had to be within a price range. This is good. Knowing what you need/want before you enter the store is good. It saves time because you don’t have to work out what you want while you’re there.
The problem is that all nylons are identical. They all look exactly the same. Yes, Holly might walk around feeling the fabric of each, AS IF THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE, but we all know that the quality of these things are exactly the same (or at the very least, impossible to discern from touching it with your thumb and forefinger). They’re the same colour. The pattern on them changes, but she doesn’t want patterns on her tights. We determined that right at the beginning (when I was still paying attention). She has no brand loyalty. We’re effectively comparing glorified identical socks.
She wasn’t shopping based on what she needed, she was shopping based on how each item made her feel. And that’s where I’m lost, because nylons don’t make me feel anything other than bored.
After the eight minutes of looking at disembodied legs, Holly chose the mid-priced pair that look suspiciously like the other fifteen million pairs that weren’t quite up to her standards. She’ll wear them five times, they’ll get laddered and the cycle will repeat again, and we’ll go shopping for some more. Probably at a different store. Hopefully somewhere that sells beer.
Design by Simon Fletcher. Powered by Tumblr.
© Copyright 2010
