oh, the humanity or lana buys industrial-sized box of kotex pads and ruins my life

oh, the humanity... Tuesday, July 15, 2008

while laughing my butt off reading THIS post i left a comment about my "perceived humiliations" as a teenager at my mother's doing, and i wanted to document for posterity:

back in the day, there was no "costco" for bulk shopping--we kicked it old school by doing ours at a local warehouse store called "robin hood's storage". it was basically the same premise as costco, just on a much smaller scale.

a family in our neighborhood owned it, and their boy, tom, was dreamy. he was 2 years older than me and i was always so nervous around him, although i have no idea why now looking back as i can see he had NO interest in me whatsoever.

of course, that didn't stop me from dressing up in my cutest esprit t-shirt to accompany my mom there every time i heard she needed to shop in hopes of seeing him stocking the shelves.

this particular summer afternoon i hit the jackpot as i spotted him right when we walked in.

i tried to look all contempo-casual cool strolling up and down the aisles with a very large cart and my dorky little brother, but i thought i was doing a fairly decent job of pulling it off.

my mom knew of my little crush, and so on the next aisle she said, "mindi--i need a few big boxes off of the top shelves that they have to lift down for us--will you go find tom and tell him i need him?"

i was all-a-flutter as i took my oh-so-nonchalant 14-year old self to the front to tell him we needed help. he walked back with me, of course not uttering a word (since boys don't like to talk, i told myself) and my mom said, "hi tom--i need you to get two boxes of the kotex sanitary napkins up there."

OH. MY. GOSH.

sanitary napkins? are you freaking kidding me, mom? KOTEX FOR CRYING OUT LOUD???!!!! now he is gonna know i have a period and everything and oh my gosh i want to DIE.
NOW.

i looked at her and she pretended not to see the convoluted, strangled look on my face as good old tom durrant, my possible future husband and prom date and father of my 1 girl who i was gonna name 'kimothy' (yeah.) got a ladder so he could pull down two GINORMOUS boxes of sanitary napkins for my mom's food storage.

i ran to the bathroom and then sat out in the van until she came out.

looking back now, i think lana knew EXACTLY WHAT SHE WAS DOING.

i didn't know she had it in her......and so i channel her each time i do something that has katie rolling her eyes and telling me, "mom! you are such a dork!"