Monday, September 08, 2003
The Savvy Shopper
Sometimes you need to be sensitized to things before you can deal with them appropriately, whether in a positive or a negative way. But when you head is ready for reality, things can be surprisingly clear. This was proven to me in that bastion of philosophic renewal, Macy’s. Let’s delve, shall we?
I’ve been thinking about buying shirts since Greg subjected that process to his unflinching scrutiny late last week. In particular, I was thinking that I don’t like to buy shirts, but I do like to own nice shirts and I’ve had to dispose of a few old favorites lately. And then I suddenly found myself at the mall being directed by my most sophisticated and efficient wife to a really drastic sale at Macy’s where I had an atypical reaction to a shirt. First, there was only one on the rack but it was, incredibly, the right size. I liked the color; the pattern was subtle, undulating, flattering. The fabric had a soft ribbed nap that felt illicitly good everywhere it touched me. 40% off, and, even under the diffuse florescent lighting of the probadoras, it made my eyes seem more intensely azure. (That’s right, azure. Not just blue. Blue is for everybody. Azure is for Chuckles.) The lines drape generously over my chestal region; the garment is equally comfortable in all modeling postures (waving to distant friends, throwing an invisible beach ball overhead, pulling an imaginary rope...) Very rarely have I been so excited about an article of clothing. But had I not been primed by prior exposure to an appropriate role model to confront my inherent reluctance to buy anything, I might have left it behind anyway and then regretted it for months thereafter. Not this time. It’s hanging in the closet and I can sneak over and caress it furtively whenever I wish. I am a better (and significantly hipper) person - not for having bought it, but for having let myself buy it. Thanks, Greg, for preparing me for this critical experience of personal growth and fashion.
However, before I had completed my purchase, I did see something disturbing. A family - dad: stocky, not tall, olive skin, golf shirt, livid with rage; mom: 40’s, quiet, tense, angry too but more in control; two young girls, maybe 10 and 12 years old, silent and cowering. Dad is shouting at the older girl in a foreign language - hebrew? Arabic? I get an Israeli-Palestinian-Lebanese vibe from the family, a general central-mid-east feeling. But that’s not the point; the point is that Dad is shouting at his daughter, right in her face, and the only words I recognize are “stupid” and “idiot.” She’s holding her hands around her waist, looking up at him with wide eyes. As he berates her, he pulls back and smacks her in the back of the head with the flat of his hand. The sound is a dull flat counterpoint to the cheerful ambient shopping soundtrack being piped in. The girl maintains silence as her head rocks forward and her hair flies up around the force of the blow. This is all happening about 25 feet from me and I walk over. “Sir,” I tell him in my gravest voice (I’m wearing a silly t-shirt and ragged old shorts, but I am cleanshaven, deepvoiced, and taller than he is), “Sir, if you are going to treat a child that way in public you should expect to hear that people disapprove of it. You should never hit a child.” He wheels on me, his anger a tangible aura around him but not so much as raising a finger to me. “It’s none of your business!,” he repeates over and again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! None of your business!” At one point the wife chimes in, adding “ You don’t understand. We didn’t know where she was.” As she offers this explanation, dad is already dragging the family deeper into the store and away from me. I haven’t said a word since my first expression of disapproval. But as they shrink into the maze of merchandise and people, I call after him, in a resonant but not loud voice, “Children should not be hit.” He shouts back over his shoulder, “Of course not!”
Kel asked me afterwards if I’d been too antagonistic in my approach to this situation - if my tone and words might have exacerbated this man’s anger, anger he’d just take out on his daughter later when I couldn’t see or intervene. And in retrospect I wish I’d been less confrontational, but it was only because I had been driven to extreme agitation by the abuse I was seeing that I got involved in the first place. I’m glad I stepped in even if it might have made things worse in the short term for that little girl. At the very least I wanted her and her sister to know that some of us don’t think that’s the way the world should work.
MORAL: When something is very right or very wrong you can feel it in your bones - and you’d better do something about it or you’ll spend a long time wishing you had.
