Sometimes I write to help me unpack things, sometimes I write because there are literally no words but I have to add some… Today is one of those days.
I’m going to take you back a while to when I asked my mum what she wanted for her birthday. She thought about it very seriously for my mother is a very serious person. Finally, days later, she told me she wanted a pair of running shoes.
At this point there are a couple of things you should know
- My mother has never run in her entire life. She’s never even run late so averse is she to the idea of running. But, to be fair she walks a lot. Very slowly but a lot.
- My husband has some very er, strong connections to the world that is running shoes so perhaps she was just trying to make it easy for me…
My husband suggested she go to one of the retail stores with which he is connected, find the shoes she wants and get back to us with the model and size.
So she went and came back to me complaining bitterly about the service. I promptly talked to my husband and suggested to him that heads should roll. He, being far less hot headed than me, calmly tells her to go back at a different time.
She does and this time she is glowing about the service so I tell my husband that maybe some promotions are due. He ignores me.
My mother then arrives with all the details of the shoes that she wants. My husband arranges to get them from the warehouse as quickly as possible because now a lot of time has passed and it’s her birthday. He gets the exact size, colour and model she wants. Everything is perfect.
We give them to her and she tells us they are two sizes too big. Way too big. Big enough that another foot could fit in them along with hers.
So today I plan to meet her at the shop where she got fitted and exchange the shoes for a pair two sizes smaller. I also plan to say something about the fact that they, in essence, got the sizing totally wrong.
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So after much palaver where she can’t find me waiting directly outside the shop we meet.
“Oh” says my mother as she glances around the shop quizzically: “they’ve changed the fit out”
“Um no they haven’t” I counter.
Not content with my answer she asks the sales assistant. As expected, the sales assistant agrees with me, they haven’t changed a thing. We both look at my mother like she is a bit odd.
We explain the shoe saga and the sales assistant asks my mum to try on the shoes that were two sizes too big and so she does. Its like we’ve found Cinderella so perfectly do they fit. I look at her to try and find some glimmer of reason as to why she told me they were two sizes to big, she tells me she never tied the laces before… I have no words. But we are here and she seems happy enough with the size now, so happy in fact that she will now change the style!
She points to a shelf (which she claims they have moved) and asks for a different pair to try on. It is when the sales assistant goes into the back that my mother looks at me and says “where are all the clothes?”
“They don’t sell clothes” I explain.
“They did last week” she says
“No, they have never sold clothes” I say with more than a hint of exasperation.
And it’s only then that she realises she has never been into this shop before.
When she went into to try on the shoes and explain to the sales assistant how her son-in-law “Mr Pencil” was getting the shoes from her from head office the reason they looked at her so oddly was they did not know Mr Pencil. Funnily enough he does not work for the competitor.
Needless to say we left with a different pair of shoes in the same size from the right or wrong shop.
Next year she is getting a gift voucher.
Oh dear Lana,
Your mother clearly does not deserve you. Kind of reminds me of the one and only time my grandfather was involved in social plans- he answered the phone and had himself and my grandmother turn up at the wrong (bemused) friend’s house for dinner, while they were missed elsewhere! x
Mum sounds like she’s getting a bit senile!
God that made me laugh Lana. It’s funny, but only because it’s not happening to me. 🙂
Lana, are you sure you weren’t shopping with me? No. hang on, I live on the Gold Coast, it couldn’t have been you I met at Athlete’s Foot! On the subject of senility, my 92 year old darling Dad rang me on a Sunday night at about 7pm saying Mum had gone for a walk that afternoon and hadn’t come home yet and he was getting worried. Mum was in hospital at the time, I know because I had flown up and taken her there in the ambulance myself. I rang the hospital – Mum was still there. I booked the first flight out of Brisbane the next morning and went straight to my parents place. When Dad asked, rather crossly, why I was there, I gently tried to explain that Mum was not missing from a walk the previous day, but still in hospital – I had checked. He got furious with me and said “I wasn’t ringing about YOUR mother, I meant MY mother!” Grandma would have been 172 if she had been out walking that Sunday! After I sorted everything out, cooked some food and got some liquids into him and got him back on his meds I took him up to visit Mum, whom he insisted he had visited every single day in hospital, sometimes twice a day (He hadn’t been up there once). Within a couple of days he had bounced back and ordered me out of the house as I was interfering in their lives, once again!