Say It Like Gollum

Thursday afternoon I gathered as much courage as I could muster, took a deep breath, and went into the Nanette Lepore boutique. I hate boutiques. I am completely uncomfortable among the snobby salesladies and pricey items. I know I don’t belong, and they know I don’t belong. At any rate, I went to try on some items. I had no intention of actually buying anything in the store, but in order to snag some good rags on eBay, I needed to figure out what size I was.

Upon entering the shop, I was greeted by… no one. This was odd. Usually salesladies are watching me like I’m Winona Ryder with a large shopping bag. Instead, they were all gathered in the back by the fitting rooms loudly griping about their working situations, leaving me to browse on my own without the dragon ladies breathing free down my neck as I looked at price tags and cringed. Very nice.

Paradise was short lived, however, when one of them broke free from the bitching session and sauntered over to me. Her bright fake smile almost distracted me from noticing that she had a blue eye and a brown eye. “Can I help you?” I pointed to a cute dress, and indicated that I wanted to try it on. She told me that it was not a dress, but a jumper and that I’d need to wear a blouse under it because it was too low cut and I had boobs. Let me say right here that this item was $275. Who the fuck has ever heard of a $275 jumper? Jumpers are the things that kindergarten teachers wear so they don’t look to threatening. Damn.

Anyway, couture confuses me, so I was not sure if I was supposed to wear the shirt under or over the dress. (I refused to call it a jumper.)

“Oh, aren’t you precious!” she said.
“Um, no. I actually was asking a serious question,” I replied.
“You wear it under. You’re so cute!”

It occurred to me at that point that she might have thought that I was 14 or so. I was wearing a pair of gym shoes, light blue flared leg jeans, the adorable baseball t-shirt with pink sleeves and a picture of a red stapler with the phrase, “Damn, it feels good to be a gangster,” on it. Topping off the look was my ginormous light blue backpack. At least I untied my jacket from around my waist before I went in.

Still, precious? That is funny.