On Shopping, Fashion, and Old People

Few tasks in life have the power to annoy me like shopping for clothes.

The chore is so unpleasant. I really do not grasp how some people, mostly women I think, can spend a considerable portion of their life thinking about it, doing it, and the worst thing of all, after doing it talking about it with sisters, neighbors, co-workers, cousins, random people on the bus, the old woman at the post office, stray cats, guy delivering unsolicited mail, and pretty much everyone and anyone else within earshot.

I fucking hate shopping.

There’s nothing worse than having to go through a thousand pairs of pants in order to find just one that may or may not fit me decently.

I bought a pair recently–without properly trying it. That’s the other thing–having to try them out in a cramped, stuffy, stinky changing room with a worn-out carpet on the floor that looks like a dead animal half-way through the process of decomposition.

So I bought without trying. They seemed my size–and since I know fashion and sizes better than anything in life (huh!), how could I go wrong. That is not a question, therefore no question mark at the end.

They are, as it turns out, a bit too tight around the ankles–or, perhaps in my middle age I am getting fat around the ankles–and a bit too loose around the waist. How the fuck is that word spelled? Waist? Waiste? Waste?

However–I know I’m not getting lighter and smaller ’round there, whatever the spelling, so why in the fuck are the pants loose?

It doesn’t really matter. All old people in the 21st century eventually end up in some kind of glossy–or shiny–track suit. That includes both my parents. They have nothing in common except that they appear to be picking all of their clothes from the same pile of no-brand track suits.

The point is–the pants I bought don’t matter because sooner or later I too will end up in a track suit.

Unless I die before that happens. In which case they’ll most likely bury me in a track suit. Easier to maneuver a carcass into it than almost anything else, I’m sure.

Practical as they undeniably are for getting on the shitter without having to mess about with buttons or zippers, track suits are disgusting and should be avoided at all costs.

They also always remind me of the pink track suit I had in the 8th grade. Pink–the one color I hate and hope to eradicate from the world before I die. I will piss on your grave, pink!

It was pink like Pepto Bismol and made of some kind of crackly plastic tissue paper.

Very loud stuff. Couldn’t burgle in it, unless you’re into burgling deaf people.

I am not.