I was startled by the air-filled sigh that rustled the hair on my arms as I gripped the steering wheel.
It was coming from the lump of teenage flesh — still a few ounces too light to engage the passenger-side airbags of my car — to my right.
I didn’t know what to make of it. The girl had been so happy, so bubbly, so brimming with enthusiasm for this eleventh-hour Christmas shopping trip with her mom.
She had been chirping about it all week. Just moments before, she’d even twittered about the stores she might visit and gifts she hoped to find as I white-knuckled my way through traffic.
But the suspiration was a harbinger.
“We can’t go to this mall!” she exclaimed with alarm just as I had carefully eased our car onto that same shopping mecca’s access road.
I don’t understand. “The whole point of this trip ... for the past 35 minutes at least ... was to go to THIS mall?!”
She held up her phone and thrust it in my direction.
If she had held it back from my face another six inches I might have barely made out a couple of big-headed cartoon characters that resembled simulated friends, but with my aging eyes and traffic laws being what they are, not to mention a swath of cars swishing by on my left, I demanded she explain herself.
“I know people at THIS mall.”
Now, I don’t know the exact translation of teenage-ese in which she was attempting to communicate, but I fully understand that it’s likely a statement conveying the kind of metamorphic adolescent embarrassment that expands a thousand-fold when one is shopping with one’s mother.
And while I can empathize with her predicament having been a teenager once myself, I could also fully appreciate the miracle that kept my own mother’s head from rocketing off her shoulders and blowing up into a gazillion fiery shards.
I quickly calculate an alternate destination and manage to navigate back onto the highway, all while lecturing about the probability of seeing familiar human beings is likely to be extremely high, no matter where we land.
She flaps her arms a bit and directs us back to the initial destination.
I hold my breath and take a different exit. This is just the beginning. For the next hour, we will have angst about parking proximity and crowd densities and the general queasiness of feeling out of place.
I also know a single, happy purchase will turn the mood around.
Three shops in, her eyes narrow on a sweater.
And not just any sweater. This one is a snowball-white, coconut-fibered confection of impossible softness that will make her the envy of the school Christmas concert.
And it will only set her back seventeen and change.
Her smile had returned as she made her way to the dressing room and then to the sales counter. She practiced third-year math and had enough cash at the ready.
The cashier smiled, but announced a foreign price .... starting with thirty-four.
We both stood there blankly for a moment but my daughter, trying to patch this glitch in the matrix, acted quickly, digging into her wallet for more cash.
I can’t help by try and stop this forward momentum.
“Wait ... the tag says seventeen ...”
I don’t have a chance to finish. The cashier is used to this exchange.
“I’m sorry but our prices are in euros.”
I turn my attention to my daughter, who hasn’t handed over the difference. “This seems like a deceptive practice. It’s perfectly okay if you want to stop the transaction.”
My daughter puts her cash away. “Yeah, I think I’ll keep looking.”
We left the store, walked about a hundred feet and found — I kid you not — the exact same sweater hanging in the center of a flurry of tops in a display window. But this one had a giant tag draped around it, beauty pageant style, announcing it could be had for the bargain price of ten dollars (minus one penny).
She tried on three styles of coconut jumpers and settles on the doppelgänger she’d had her mind set on previously.
The nice young lady at the counter bleeps up the price ... and starts with twenty-four ...
I can’t help myself ...
“This sweater is in your window with a sign advertising it for $9.99.”
“That was our crazy sweater sale.”
I cock my head. “Yes? And this is one of the sweaters in the window. With a sign that says $9.99.”
“I think or crazy sweater sale is over now.”
I blink. We trade another couple of sentences where were state the obvious. There is silence.
My daughter is shrinking beside me. She starts to apologize for my logic and obstinance. She’s ready and willing to split the difference.
And I am almost about to let it go when a manager swoops in and gives the clerk the approval she needed to give us the sale price.
“It’s fair, and we want people to be happy,” he says with a practiced flair that helps everyone save face.
My smile suddenly feels less tight, though I’m a little afraid to look at the expression on my daughter’s face.
I worry that being in the vicinity of mortification may have killed her buzz.
But she’s smiling and typing away on her phone.
“Hey ... I just looked up the Euro conversion rate: 17€ should have been about $24 ... not $34.”
“Want to go back? Cause a scene? I’m ready!”
“Maybe next time. Let's just get outta here before I see someone I know.”
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