Shopping with Gollum

     I shop like a guy.

     Really, I do. I lack the shopping gene that many females seem to have. If I need something, I go in, I get it, I leave. I don't shop. Malls have me running for the exit in less than thirty minutes. Time me. I have little to no fashion sense. My wardrobe primarily consists of scrubs, stretchy pants, and t-shirts.

    Unfortunately, I have passed the lack of this gene on to my daughter. When the time came this week to get clothes for her senior pictures photo session, it was like dragging Gollum out of its cave. ("Retail! It burns us!!") I was able to lure her out with the promise of Starbucks, which, frankly, I was going to need as well to survive this deviation in our normal comfort zone.

    My girl wears almost nothing that is not a fandom related t-shirt, jeans, and Chuck Taylors every day of the week. I can get her into a Hot Topic without problems, but I knew it would be a monumental quest finding a dress that she would agree to wear. I had done some online shopping first in hopes of not having to slog from shop to shop, thinking a vintage look might be really cool and just different enough to tempt her. I found some neat dresses on Retro Vixen's website, pinup type stuff that I thought would be adorable on her.

     "It has flowers on it." This was said with a wrinkled nose, and a dubious look.

     "I think this would look wonderful," I said, trying to fight my own urge to just hit Walmart and be done with it. But the grandmas have been after me for four years to get "real" pictures taken of my kids, and not just candid iPhone shots. If I don't follow through on this, well...my name is mud, since this is her senior year. "Look, they have steampunk stuff, too. Do you want to check it out?"

     "Sure," she shrugged. That is as close to a yes as I was going to get, so we got in the car.

     We hit two different shops (Retro Vixen and Monkey Wrench here in Kansas City. They have amazing pinup and steampunk type clothing, if you wanna look at their websites). In each place, we found these lovely dresses, but my picky Gollum was not having any of it.

      "It's too red."

      "No flowers."

      She loved the dark, shimmery black on red steampunk skirt, but there wasn't anything in the way of a shirt to go with it that would fit her also-inherited-from-Mom voluptuous figure.

     "I don't know," she said. "I really want something formal."

     I was surprised. "Like a gown? A prom gown kind of formal?"

    "Yeah." She brightened a little. "Let's go to Deb's."

    I facepalmed. No matter how many stores we go to, we always end up at Deb's, in the middle of the busiest freaking mall in the affluent county south of where we live. It's a little like an episode of that show with the rich girls and their $30K Sweet-16 parties at this mall. But, we always end up finding something she likes there that fits her well. We should have gone there first.

    We arrive at the mall and make a hurried beeline for Deb's, and she immediately finds some of the most sparkly, fluffy feminine dresses in the store. I'm open mouthed at the things she's picking out. They're gorgeous.

    And they're 70 percent off. Mom scores.

    We knew THE DRESS when Gollum suddenly turned into Arwen as she came out of the dressing room. She was smiling, the strapless bodice of the gown sparkling, the icy blue and silver floor-length skirt looking like something Princess Elsa from Frozen would wear.


    "I love this one!"

     I was too amazed by my beautiful daughter to say much other than, "I love it, too."

    She was so happy that I talked her into getting a casual outfit for the candid shots there too, and she tried on four different outfits without protest before deciding what she liked best.

     Start to finish, from leaving the house to getting home, we were gone for three hours. We were like real girls for an entire afternoon, and I loved shopping with her more than I thought I would.

     We even hit Hot Topic for fandom-related stuff. She's going to wear her anti-possession tattoo shoes with the Princess Elsa gown.