The next clerk pointed to the end cap by a wall display. “We have some dance leggings and tights right over there,” she says, pointing to a big pink poster of a girl doing ballet. Bingo.
Ignoring the rubber boots that have now made their way into our cart, I push Savvy over to the wall display. Here, we have several shelves of pink, black, and white leggings, some t-shirt looking things, some body suit looking things, some tights… and they are all in thick cellophane packages labeled with tags that have no sizes on them, just a mysterious secret code of letters and numbers.
I shuffle through a few of them. The pictures on the front all look alike – just like the poster: a pink ballerina. Completely unhelpful. I make a mental note to complain to the manufacturer if I survive this shopping trip. The back of the package, however, has a small drawing of the garment inside. We have choices of a t-shirt with built in pants, like a 1-piece bathing suit with short sleeves; there is a similar shirt with long sleeves… a scuba suit-looking thing and some other stuff.
The girls in the Olympics wore stuff with short sleeves or no sleeves, I think, but probably any of these will be the right thing. And although these aren’t shiny, I think they’ll be fine. They’re just temporary anyway. There’s just one thing to do.
Call my wife.
There’s no way in hell I’m buying any of these without a little guidance; that way we can share the blame if I get it wrong. But more importantly, I really have no idea what size I should get. A quick glance down the back of my daughter’s t-shirt shows that she, like her father, doesn’t like tags and they have been removed. So I make the call to Michele.
She doesn’t answer.
Hmm… okay, no problem. Worst case scenario, I can have the kid start trying these things on, and eventually one will fit. But that really is a worst case scenario, because I don’t want to go to the dressing room and I really don’t want to have to make her try on a dozen outfits. Neither one of us is going to be patient enough to get through that without crying.
Then, I get an idea. If I can decide on a style, I’m halfway home. I don’t care about what color the thing is; we have already decided that this one is temporary anyway. It can be any color, but black seems pretty dance-y to me. Probably not best for gymnastics. None of the things are shiny, so that isn’t an option… Pink? Maybe. Not white; too much like underwear.
Pink’s a good gymnastics color, I think. The best of the three, anyway. But I will go with any color in a garment that actually fits my daughter and look even remotely leotardish.
I stare at the display. There are still a lot of choices here. Different shirt styles, different sizes… even if I just go with pink, I still have quite a few decisions.
Another good option, I decide, is to buy a few of all of them. That way, we will definitely have one that’s right, and we can return the rest. That sounds even better than going to the dressing room. It’s overkill, yes, but it can also be our last resort option.
Good. Now we are getting somewhere.
TO BE CONTINUED….
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DAN ALATORRE 