Sixteen the Hard Way -17.3- Choos

I managed to get out of there with only three new dresses and two of the skort jumpers. Oh, and two skirts to go with the tops we’d gotten earlier. “But I already have slacks to go with those,” I protested.

“Sometimes,” Donna explained, “you just really need a skirt.”

I rolled my eyes, and Mom giggled.

“You seem to be taking this better now,” she added.

“Yeah, well,” I admitted. “I guess so.”

“You did pick out your own sundress,” she pointed out as we left Nordstroms.

“Yeah, well,” I said, wavering a bit. “You guys are way too fond of pink.” For some reason, I felt the need to fluff my newly red hair.

“And you decided on the denim jumper,” Donna commented, making a face.

I glared at her, “It’s the only thing we got that has pockets!” For some reason, that made them both laugh like loons.

We got back out into the mall proper, and I was surprised to see that the place was still full of shoppers. People rushed this way and that, with a few lingering near the entrance to the food court. I thought we had been trapped in the bowels of the changing rooms for long enough that most people would have gone home, and so could I. But no!

“Time to find you some shoes,” Mom announced.

“I have shoes,” I said, wiggling my feet to demonstrate. My sneakers were practically new, classic Vans in a dark gray. I had an old pair that still fit that were almost identical except for being tan.

“You can’t wear sneakers to church,” Mom pointed out. “Especially not with that nice dress.”

It was a prelude to madness. I tried distraction. “Nordstrom’s has a shoe department,” I pointed out. “We could have shipped for shoes without leaving the store.” The big department store now felt like a refuge for avoiding being dragged through several shops looking for the perfect sandal, brogan, or clog.

Donna huffed. “Nordstroms shoes are mostly old lady styles.” A tactical error on her part since Mom bought shoes there only last month.

Mom spared her only a short glare before marshaling us troops for her campaign. We’d scouted the whole mall earlier and found eleven shoe stores, only two of which were not devoted to fashionable shoes for women and girls.

“We saw some cute shoes earlier, Joni, didn’t we,” Mom suggested, but I didn’t rise to that bait.

“Mphm,” I grunted, which again caused Donna to giggle. We both knew I was doomed.

“You’re going to need a purse, too,” Donna suggested, just to twist the knife.

* * *

Looking at shoes, trying them on, and arguing about which ones were acceptable took the rest of the afternoon and into the dinner hour.

I put my foot down, so to speak, on the idea of heels, or who knows what insanity might have happened, probably at least two or three more pairs. As it was, we, or rather I, ended up with five new pairs of shoes. Including a pair of red-gold Vans I was now wearing almost identical to the gray ones I had had on, except for a sort of fake bow at the top of the vamp. (If you don’t know what part of a shoe the vamp is, neither did I until the boy who had sold us the sneakers told me.)

I also collected a lot of polite, even genteel, compliments on the shape of my feet, the delicacy of my ankles, and the slenderness of my calves. Shoe salesmen seem to all be a bit kinky about lower extremities.

The other pairs of shoes were two of what were called simply flats, one pair of sandals and another called kitten heels. They snuck that last pair in after my prohibition on any heels at all because I really didn’t notice. The lift on the embarrassingly cutely named shoes was barely more than an inch, and actually, I suppose I could use all the help I could get in the height department.

“After all,” Donna insisted when I protested the switcheroo, “you have to have a nice pair just for wearing on a date.”

And that set off an even more embarrassing argument on the way back to the car.