Remains of the Daze: The Official Coming Out of Brand New Consumers

I may have done my children a disservice. Or may not have depending on your view. My 2 oldest sons are now respectively 15 and 14. They are earning their own money and have recently developed an appreciation for style and its fickle devices. As a stay at home mother of seven, my forays into the world of shopping and malls have been negligible. You'd think that having a degree in fashion design would have prevented such a serious state of affairs but it is true; I have sadly neglected my children's' training in the language of mall crawling. That is not to say that my children have ever been poorly dressed; in their early years when I had time to sew (really?), I was guilty of dressing them in hand made outfits designed to mark them out as siblings and guaranteed to make them easy to spot in a crowd at church. Sadly, they harbour serious angst of the memory of such display but at the time it seemed they enjoyed the matching vests made of frog-covered cotton, corduroy pants with suspenders and matching bow ties. I must admit that until last week, my most recent trip to the mall with them for a serious shopping trip occurred when the youngest-now 8- was safely ensconced in a stroller and the older 4 securely fastened to it with dire threats. We paraded through the mall amidst stares and repeated congratulations of bravery, kudos and possibly amazement and stupidity. "What? You are here shopping alone with 5 young children? The week before Christmas? Are you mad?" I must admit though, that I, myself, am a serious shopper. In order to provide food and shelter for such a swarm I know how to spot a deal, wrangle a cheaper price and knock off the tax or get something thrown in for free! Feigning heart failure (I learned that from my Aunt Mary), the ability to turn blue or just nonchalantly walking away can do wonders when purchasing several thousand dollars worth of stuff! Over 29 years of building houses and pricing jobs has bought me some experience.
In recent years, I have found that it has been cheaper to shop at the big 'W', 'Z' (if you are American, think 'bulls eye'-there you have it), outlet stores and second hand stores. However, recently I have realized that now that the oldest are in men's sizes and in possession of their own fistful of dollars, they can provide their own flights of fantasy.
So, enter American Eagle. Literally. Well, first I had to find the place-wow, the mall has changed in the last 5 years! Why do they keep changing the position of the stores? Does it have anything to do with the reason groceries stores do not stock soup in alphabetical order? Do they think that we'll unerringly shop at at new store simply because it occupies the same real estate as one that we shopped at 5 years ago? Of course. We are cattle. Driven to hand over our hard earned dollars with glazed eyes filled with giant sized images of life ecstatic wearing the latest gear. Well, we were guilty. I want my children to be liked and admired just as any other self respecting parent, so I led my son, Jacob, to the slaughter-gift cards and cash gripped in his tight little fist. Yes, Jacob is the saver of the lot; the one who has the largest bank account and the nicest stuff! Eliglible young women take note! However, he is the least talkative of the lot and was overpowered by the quantity of stuff, the selection of sizes and-what!-at least one dozen different styles of jeans! Washes! Cuts! Rise! Ripped! Ripped? Hey, I've been throwing those out! And they are $20 more than their respectable, unfaded, unwashed, unripped neighbour! I thought Jacob was going to disown me when I told the salesperson that we would take the unripped, newest looking, cheaper version and take the belt sander to them in the garage for five minutes! We would have ripped jeans for 30% off and could control our own version of the rips! Sadly, I was almost laughed out of the store, but not before I dropped $60 on the sale rack, mind you! My oldest boy, Levi, needed some AE labelled-low-rise-in an inseam length that is respectable-jeans! After all, he is 6 foot and I even I understand that floods are NOT cool!
So, Jacob paid his dues and is now counted among the fashion conscious sporting the necessary labels. He even survived the embarrassment of shopping with his mother and actually thanked me for it later (such a sweet boy!) I realize that my children are sadly un-savy consumers and am prepared to remedy that by sending them to the mall with their friend, Gracie. She knows all the 'best warehouses' (to quote Jane Austen) and where to find dark, skinny, ripped jeans. And I shall continue my forays into those other 'Big Letter' stores until the younger set realize that they too have been mislead by their mother for all those years!