This happened to me

There ain’t no ‘fun’ in SHOPPING

Nowhere can that word be seen.

‘Shopping,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said. ‘Not even,’ said I. ‘In your Universe, perhaps, but not in mine!’

It all started innocently enough. There’s this bloody wedding coming up, remember the one? And being a bloody wedding, much resembling the Kardashians on crack do country, there seems to be a need to dress for the occasion. In my mind, this reads as dress for the occasion and yes, I had plans to put clothes on! Like, duh! Going commando’s one thing. Going in the birthday suit, that’s something else entirely, and I already know nobody’s gonna Emperor’s new clothes on my account.

In any case, apparently my work duds ain’t gonna cut it and even my best pub clobber ain’t much cop, neither. My brother, who picks up most of his clothes, by his accounting at least, ‘off the side of the road’, has even less chance of being permitted to dress out of his wardrobe and thusly it was that a shopping trip to the big city was planned. As our Aussie brethren would put it, ‘Crikey!’

Yeah, no shit!

The drive

The big city of Christchurch, population: approx. 396.2k, (that’ll be enough laughing from you real big-city folks!) is the biggest city in the South Island (of New Zealand) and about 3 ½ hours drive across the Southern Alps from where I live on the West Coast. That makes it a bit of a journey, especially because the drive isn’t exactly an easy one, and we generally plan to stay overnight rather than do a round trip.

We started off not too bad. The car had only just been serviced, had been cleaned of its usual accumulation of debris and washed, and it was fueled up and ready to go. My youngest had managed to convince my brother to have a shower (he can be a bit reluctant) and she’d discreetly placed an air-freshener above his seat in the car to counter his rampant halitosis. (I love my brother, I do, but we all know he can be a bit of the troll beneath the bridge.) Snacks, water, first aid kit, and overnight bags were packed. The morning chores were raced through, and the pet-sitter briefed and organized. We were on the road by a mighty 0850! A minor miracle for the four of us.

The drive went without a hitch. Again, another miracle. Nobody needed a toilet between toilets, nobody needed a bucket for nausea, nobody complained, nobody appeared to have suddenly remembered they’d forgotten anything vital halfway through the journey. No flats. No mad possums or wild pigs hurling themselves under the wheels. No road closures or car accidents.

I should have known.

Arrival

The oldest, with whom we were supposed to be staying, had. no. idea. we. were. coming. This had been on the youngest to organize, but I guess she’d forgotten this minor detail. Oldest works nights. She was still in bed when we arrived, and it took a minute (or some) to catch on to what was happening. Oldest can be a hibernating bear at the best of times, never mind when actually woken from said hibernation. I thought she handled it extremely well, in all honesty — but that may have been because she has a peculiar fondness for my brother. Go figure.

We were given half an hour to recuperate from the trip and for oldest to wake up, get dressed, and slurp half a coffee. Hey, I felt her pain. That coffee was essential! And she only got half. (That was going to bite us later.)

The rest of the shopping crew arrived!

Now, technically, the original plan was for two teams. One team, of pretty much only my oldest, was to take my brother to get a suit and accompanying accessories. The other team was intended to take me to do the same but also for all the damn bridesmaids and the bride to get their wedding shoes. Somehow, plan out the window, the whole damn contingent went as one party and thus it was that there were; two vehicles, one brother, one me, one bride, three bridesmaids, and a grandson of nine. Keep in mind that not one of us, except my brother and the grandson, fall into the category of small or diminutive, and everybody is either on the spectrum or suffers from some kind of anxiety disorder. Yeah, there was that.

Shopping

With everybody distributed across vehicles (TG, it was my brother, the oldest, and I in one to ourselves) we hit the road. Right across the city to our first stop, a secondhand /preloved clothing store called Toff’s. Now, from my memory, Toff’s was once upon a time a tiny little boutique secondhand clothing store that specialized in funk, punk, goth, and labeled clothing (hence, Toff’s). We used to hunt there for fancy dress or garden party outfits, dinners at the Grand Hall at the Arts Centre, that sort of thing.

Alas, no longer.

Toff’s is now a garbage disposal located in a hanger-sized building big enough to house at least three Boeing 737’s nose-to-tail! Okay, maybe not quite but, by fuck, it was huge! And bright. So very, very bright. And lined with row upon row of racks of clothing organized by type and color. The ceiling, by the way, was at least sixty feet above our heads. It. Was. Vast! And busy. And everything echoed.

Release the horde!

We swept into that place, my poor wide-eyed, bushy-bearded brother looking like he’d recently escaped a homeless shelter, caught up amidst these large, colorful, loud young women. (I managed to kind of quietly bring up the rear along with the oldest. We wanted to hide. I’m sure brother did, too, but he was shit out of luck!) They galloped between the racks, brother in tow, looking for the suits and then, when they found them, began thrusting items at bro, turning him this way and that like he was no more than a mere mannequin on a turntable.

It then turned out that there are no dressing rooms in which to try anything on and there was no way this side of hell freezing over that they were going to get bro to try pants on in that wide open space without virtue of a bit more cover than a gaggle of women assuring him they could effectively hide him with their bodies. Say what? Are you shitting me? Bro didn’t say it but his panic-stricken, possum-in-headlights look said it all for him.

It was finally agreed that one of the women (because it was going to be their opinion that counted) would accompany him to the van where he could do the test drive of pants in the rear.

This worked out okay and, eventually, he came away with a very serviceable couple of pairs of dress pants and a suit jacket, all for the princely sum of $6. This made bro happy. He’d saved up a significant amount of his drinking dosh for the occasion and the less he spent, the more he could put back into drinking later.

His luck was not to last.

Shirts at Toff’s were not a go. Recall my words that it was a garbage disposal? On the whole, that’s what it was, and it was a sheer miracle that bro came away with pants and jacket. Anything else? Not a hope. Faded, stained, torn, buttonless. Rags. It was all rags.

So, out we swept, back into our vehicles, and off across town once more.

Next stop; shoes.

Repeat the charging, chattering horde of the first stop, only this time the women were in more of a rush because, after palming bro off on me to find the shoes, they were more interested in shoes for themselves. Picture this: Warehouse. Rows upon rows upon rows of. . . shoes. And, on sale! Enter; women. Young women. Women bearing parental credit card.

Got that?

Yes, well, by about this time, a lack of caffeine and food was beginning to have an effect. People (especially oldest, struggling along on that half a cup from earlier) were beginning to get just a little hangry. It’s mid-afternoon. It’s hot. And there’s not a café in sight. Finally, having corralled women and boxes, a brother who claims he’s happy with the shoes he’s bought (I still think he grabbed the first pair that remotely made the women happy), and a bored and hyper-active nine-year-old, we once again retreat to vehicles to cross more of town to the biggest mall in the city.

Fucking marvelous. Now we’re a horde of hangry and stressed autistics in a massively crowded and hot super-hive! And we’re not done shopping.

The final phase

Brother couldn’t cope with the food choices at all and was very happy to be selected McDonald’s and a coffee. He ate very quietly, looking a little like a squirrel in the midst of a pack of ravenous hunting dogs, and made not a squeak.

Next stop: menswear for a shirt. And there were no two-dollar bargains here, let me tell you. All I can say is, there’s a bloody good reason I live in singlets and tees. And there’s also bloody good reason CEO’s and executive types demand high salaries! What are these damn clothes made of? Spun gold? How the hell do they justify the prices? I mean, I looked. I did NOT see rows of overpaid Italian tailors sitting hand-sewing in a back room. Okay?

One shirt, and bro’s drinking money was looking seriously depleted. Bro himself was looking just a little woeful. Admittedly, the very nice vest, bought at a third of the price of the nowhere near as nice alternative to be found at the shirt shop, did put a smile on bro’s face. His old one no longer fits, on account of some unexpected (!) weight gain of recent years, and he’d been thoroughly looking forward to a new one. I treated him to a new hat to match and you’d a thunk he was living all his Christmases at once.

And, finally, it was done. The women (oldest not inclusive) were happy that bro (I took care of my own damn self, thank you very much!) was ready to accompany me in walking the bride down the aisle (in the absence of my ex) and they had urges to wander off and do more shopping. (What’s with that, already? Is that like a certifiable illness or something?) Oldest, bro, and I wanted nothing more than to go home and, given it wasn’t half as late as we’d initially anticipated, bro and I decided that we’d rather return to the West Coast than to stay. Oldest wasn’t unhappy with this as she wasn’t exactly prepared for guests, and we were saving her further headache.

The Aftermath

Fortunately, the weather was kind to us, and it was a relatively easy, if long, drive home. There’s no road-markings for a lot of it, and no lights! It pays to drive easy through the Pass if you want to make it home alive.

We did. It was late, close to midnight, which felt a whole lot later given the energy-draining events of the day, but man, were we ever glad to walk through our own front door. That’s it, by the way. If we never have to do a shopping trip like that one again, it’ll be too soon. Me, I have a sudden newfound fondness for online shopping!

Note for Elizabeth Emerald: save yourself the trouble. I say and I and you say and me. And I is grammatically correct. I swear.

To all of you fabulous writers and readers out there,

Aroha nui, kia kaha, and haere mai.

Fighting!

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