Seduction

I consider myself to be a very intelligent person. I also consider myself someone who should learn from past mistakes. However, it turns out that I was wrong on both counts. Remember last year when I made the mistake of doing post-Christmas shopping at Bath and Body Works? Remember how I was tossed about by very large women who are also very serious about shopping for good smelling hygienic products? Yeah. So do I. It was horrible.

On Friday, I got off at noon thanks to my brilliant manipulation of my boss. I decided that I was going to go down to the mall since I heard on some CNN report that women's clothing was more than likely to be on basement bargain clearance due to the lack of good sales on those items before Christmas.

Naturally, at JC Penny, I was very taken with a pair of red shoes. I've ALWAYS wanted a pair of red shoes but in this case, it took me 30 minutes to talk myself out of them based on the fact that I really have nothing to wear them with and even if I did, I don't wear anything but my flip flops to work (this did not, however, stop me from re-visiting the shoe department several different times to stare at them longingly. I think the sales girls thought I was a little bit crazy).

On my way out of the mall, I purposely walked on the opposite side from Bath and Body Works. I pretended to be interested in something at Abercrombie and Fitch (let's face it, when was the last time anything in there would have ever even fit me? 1986, that's when. When I was 9 and also about 60 pounds) so that I wouldn't even look in that direction. What I didn't count on was the seduction factor. Bath and Body Works employees are very cunning in their product placement, putting the best smelling, most potent stuff right by the damn door. It fills the entire mall corridor, and pulls the unsuspecting, such as myself, straight in.

Once I got in, I realized that I had made a serious mistake as the only thing I was really interested in buying were the Wallflowers (a plug in), and they were surrounded by several VERY large and VERY busty black women. I considered leaving, but the deals were so good that I couldn't help myself.

I waded in and started looking for the scents that I wanted only to have one woman say to me (I'm not very good at writing Ebonics, but I'm going to do my best), "MMMMM...GIRL....I KNOW YOU JUS DIN'T TAKE THA LAS KITCHIN SPICE."

I was terrified (I think that she thought she was just having a pleasant conversation but I felt threatened...this is the one thing that I will never understand about Texas. People down here not only talk differently, but they have these different tones that I don't understand that sound like fighting to me). She was all up on me, her breasts shoved in my personal space. I just held out my hand and let her snatch it up. I thought that we were finished, but it was apparent that she was following me from place to place, just trying to take all of the good stuff I found.

We had another altercation just a few moments later when I took the one remaining sugar and fig hand lotion. It went like this, "GIRL! Whatchu doin' here anyway? Ain't you suppose to be at work? You got no bi'ness being here." I gave her my lotion.

In the end, the very large black lady left me alone to go trail another peace-keeping white lady, I got all the stuff that I wanted (with only a little pushing and shoving), and only had to wait in line for a grand total of 45 minutes (yeah, that's right, FORTY-FIVE minutes in a store the size of a postage stamp).

I'm hoping that next year, I won't have to go through this again. In fact, I'm going to make a note on my forehead...