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Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Dress Shopping with Keelinn [I'm posting this story by 'popular demand'... OK, OK, I'm posting this story cause Lori and Darlene keep asking me exactly when I'm going to post it.] A few Saturdays ago was Wendy's memorial service. Early that morning, Lori and I went to pick-up cutie patootie Keelinn from her other grandparents... and to our surprise they hadn't dressed her appropriately for the service at all. Expecting that Keelinn was coming pre-dressed and knowing that we didn't have time to go out to Groton to pick up clothes, it was decided that I would take Keelinn shopping for a new 'pretty dress.' I don't know if you've ever shopped for a 'pretty dress' on the Ithaca Commons, but there's not many places to go. We checked out Alphabet Soup (where we narrowly avoided purchasing a ballerina dress and a dress-up crown. Keelinn was wearing it and looked up at me... 'Shane, you're never going to get me to take this off. I have always wanted a crown just like this.'), the used clothing store Trader K's (where Keelinn proclaimed 'There is nothing pretty here!'), the Cat's Pajamas (who only seemed to have beach dresses in gaudy bright colors), and April Cornell. At April Cornell, Keelinn found the dress of her dreams. After huffing and puffing around the Commons, and telling me multiple times she was 'over' dress shopping (I doubled over laughing when she very seriously proclaimed, 'Shane, I'm over this.'), she walked right up to this pretty blue number with sequins and said, 'Oh. I love this one!' And I gotta admit, it was a beautiful dress. But I'm sure my face went pale when I saw the price tag... $75.00! Outside of a leather jacket I NEVER wear, I have never spent $75.00 on an item of clothing for myself, let alone a dress for a five-year-old who's going to outgrow it in a year. After begging her to check-out other (cheaper) dresses to no avail, I reluctantly let her try on the dress in the dressing room. On the way to the dressing room, however, I made a huge blunder by saying, 'Honey, if we get this dress your Grandmother is going to kill me! Its very expensive.' I thought she didn't hear me, it certainly didn't seem to register with her... she was mentally set on trying this dress on. And then she asked me to come into the dressing room with her to help her try it on. So I'm already conscious of the fact that I'm a 25-year-old male accompanying a 5-year-old girl into a dressing room (thanks to questioning glances from other shoppers) upon which the situation takes a sharp bad turn when Keelinn whispers, 'Shane, how much does this dress cost?' In my stupidity, I responded, '$75.00 but you can't tell Grandma Darlene, 'cause she'll kill me!' All of the sudden, at what seemed like the top of her lungs, Keelinn shouts, 'No! I'm not keeping a secret!' [Kudos to Lori and Darlene for instilling the 'no secrets' lesson...] I swear she yelled that three times before I was able to calm her down by saying, 'OK, honey. We'll tell Grandma. No secrets from Grandma Darlene.' And by this time, she had the dress on, but it was over her clothes and so it was really tight and she started to panic because she didn't think she could get it off by herself... so she started whimpering and I was so freaked out she was going to start crying and someone was going to come tearing into the dressing room. When we finally emerged from the dressing room, my face must have been beet-red. A few more strange glances, but Keelinn quickly distracted them by a song she was making up as we stood in line... something like 'Shane's buying me this pretty dress. It's so pretty, but Grandma Darlene's gonna kill him when she finds out how much it costs. I can't wait to wear my pretty dress to Wendy's memorial service. I'm gonna look so pretty. And Shane's so great cause he’s buying me this pretty dress...' [OK, She may or may not have said 'Shane's so great,' but it seems like it would fit there... eh?] But Keelinn wasn't done being adorable... when presenting the dress to the cashier so that I could pay for it, she asked very bluntly, 'Why are your dresses so expensive? My Grandma is going to kill Shane when he tells her how much this dress cost.' But the cashier's chuckle turned into tears when the cashier asked her when she was going to wear the dress. Of course Keelinn told her it was for 'a funeral for my friend Wendy. We're having a celebration of Wendy's life to tell stories about her and jokes and laugh and cry and everyone who loves her is going to be there...' She went on and on in this huge run-on sentence and the cashier didn't know quite what to make of this little girl telling her such a moving thing... except cry. That's right, kids. She balled right there behind the cash register. But the dress WAS beautiful, and Keelinn was the belle of the memorial (we also got a bunch of tulips so that Keelinn could pass them out to family at the service). ...and I earned my 'super uncle' points for the weekend. | private feedback | |
Hey! I'm Shane... a proud gay progressive Democrat who has recently relocated to New York City from Ithaca, NY. As I am no longer in Ithaca, I haven't quite decided the fate of this blog. Drop me a line!
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