middle school shopping spree

On Monday I took my 13 year old cousin shopping.  I had stopped by her house on Sunday to drop something off and my aunt asked me if I would be willing to take her.  My aunt and uncle are really not into shopping – especially at a mall.  Like it’s the very last thing they would like to be doing.  It probably falls behind getting a root canal.  But my cousin had apparently been saving up for an iphone (um, what 13 year old needs an iphone?) and then changed her mind and decided she wanted to get new clothes instead.  So on Monday, we headed to the mall armed with quite a bit of money (it looked like she was pretty close to being able to afford the phone).

We hit Kohl’s first because I thought it would be good to get her in a department store setting with lots of options and I knew they usually had several sale racks.  At first she was like a lost little bird who had fallen out of the nest.  She wasn’t aware of the need to look at the sizes before she took something off the rack and I think the amount of racks to go through was intimidating.  So once we got the sizes figured out I helped her pull some pieces to try on.  It’s funny how styles have morphed since I was in middle school.  There were skinny jeans everywhere and I don’t think you could have paid someone to wear skinny jeans when I was in 7th grade.  Later on in Pac Sun we did happen upon some brightly colored jeans that did remind me of my green and purple jeans I used to sport.  My older cousin had a bright red pair.  We looked GOOD.

Anyway, back to the trip at hand.  We go to the dressing rooms and she starts trying things on, coming out to check my opinion on a couple of pieces.  And here’s where I about died for the first time that day – she came out in a size 1 skinny jean and asked me if I thought they would be okay if she wore them with a belt.  They were too big for her!  The size 1 skinny!!!  Oh, to be 13 again (or more like 9 in my case!).

From there we hit a lot of other stores and she scored in basically every one.  Old Navy – polk dot bikini (we had to search for the XS).  American Eagle – cute hoodie and shirt.  Aeropostale – a hoodie that she gasped over because she loved it so much and some more cute shirts.  Anchor Blue – jeans and a cool belt.  Target – a “non-blue or green” shirt (blue is her favorite color to wear and she’d gone a little overboard at that point).  By then she’d done so well that we left.  We did all that damage in just under 3 hours (including eating lunch).

My favorite parts of the day were seeing the balance of little girl and teenager in her.  It was really fun to help her find things to try and teach her little things about shopping (like what a jeans tag that says 1/2 S means – she kept saying “half S”) and it was cool to see her handle her money and make good decisions about what she should buy and what she should just leave on the shelf.  When we went into Wet Seal I was relieved that she was a little overwhelmed by the sheer trashiness of it (when did it get so trashy anyway?  or maybe I just got old?) But she was so excited to go into the Pink part of Victoria Secret even though I told her that if I let her buy anything there her dad would kill me.  Thankfully she didn’t.

And she was sooo thankful about me taking her.  She kept saying thanks over and over again.  Very sweet.  We’ve got plans for another go round before school starts again this fall.  I wonder if the skinny jeans will still be everywhere.