Chaos Attraction

White-Hooded Sweatshirt

2006-12-10, 12:07 p.m.

Now I'm going to write the most trivial fucking entry alive. I deserve all the eye-rolls that will be coming from anyone who reads this. I will not be offended if you split after a few paragraphs, grumbling that I should be worrying about feeding the hungry instead of buying myself more shit.

See this sweatshirt?

This beautiful sweatshirt has caused me a ridiculous amount of shopping angst over the last three months.

I normally am not all that interested in merchandise from my alma mater. I had a sweatshirt I was fond of that got lost at Dave's, I've got a few shirts here and there from Picnic Day/The Buzz events, I've got one shirt about cow tipping, and I've got one logo shirt that I bought because it matched a skirt I was making. Most of the time school merch boils down to writing the name of the school on the front in some boring manner on a dark blue background or something.

But this one? Is a pretty shade of girly-ass pink, and with a hibiscus! (I heart those Hawaiian-type flowers.) I have been enchanted by it since it first came out around October or so.

But, there were a few things that kept me from buying the little sucker.

1. The price, which was $46.99. Fifty bucks for a dang sweatshirt? If I'm going to pay $50 for a sweatshirt, it better have bling on it or something or at least LOOK like it's worth $50. This one looks to me like the biggest case of Pricing for Pretty that I ever saw outside of a craft fair. It fairly shrieks, "We can charge $50 for this because twentysomething girls waste money a lot! And it's PINK!"

I mean, really: doesn't it look like it should be around $35, something reasonable?

2. The background color. I can count on one hand the number of white things I own (that I haven't tie-dyed). White is not a color I wear too often because it's a frigging stain magnet. I look at this sparkling white and think, "Someone is so gonna spill wine or Kool-Aid or spaghetti sauce on it."

3. I have a job that's really flexible in dress code, but sweats are one of the few things you just don't wear in. So I'd only be wearing this $50 stain-magnet sweatshirt on weekends... and what am I normally doing on weekends? Either working out or doing some kind of (possibly messy) craft. These days I try not to buy too many funny saying shirts because I can only wear them 2/7 of the week- a sweatshirt certainly falls into that category as well.

So, I did not purchase it. I gave it longing looks every time I saw it all fall instead, and tried to remind myself of #'s 1, 2, and 3. How there were other things I could spend my money on that were actually worth what I paid for 'em, that I could use all days of the week, that weren't just asking for someone to wreck 'em.

Last week, there was a "all things on sale"-type event at the school bookstore. I thought, "Well, if it's on sale, maybe I can justify it to myself," and went in. OF COURSE that sweatshirt was gone from the store by the time I got in. I don't know if it sold out within five minutes of opening or if the store people just plain hid it because they wouldn't want such a thing on sale. But given that they were all back in stock again THE NEXT DAY makes me feel a wee bit suspicious.

I thought of a loophole- yes, this harkens back to yesterday's entry. Ask Mom to buy me said sweatshirt, and I wouldn't feel so dang annoyed at myself if it wasn't my money that bought it. (Mom spends a hell of a lot more on clothes than I do, so the price wouldn't faze her.) Except for the fact that (a) this thing wasn't buyable online, and (b) she'd have to be in town between noon and 5 on a Saturday to buy it for me. The likelihood of THAT, however, was slim to none. Especially since the next time she'll be in town before Christmas is for Alicia's graduation party, next Saturday afternoon.

I mentioned it to her anyway. She was all, "So buy it and I'll pay you back." Riiiight. Given how I am forever in Big Stinking Trouble with her for paying her back and have an account set up in which I pay her money back for approximately eternity (paid off the old laptop, now I still owe her for the bed...and for every other damn thing in life at this point, I suspect), I sure as fuck don't ask her to pay me back every time she wants me to pay for something of hers. For one thing, I owe her (forever), and for another, asking for the money back would only lead into us having another fight. (misscourtness said this was a mom version of no.)

*sigh* So much for that idea.

The thing that annoyed me the most was, despite all of the good and logical reasons for me not to get the dang thing, I knew that I'd still end up buying it in the end because I'd wanted it for months.

Anyway, you think you know the ending to this story: I caved in and bought it on Friday, having exhausted all logic and a possible escape route. There were only four of them left...and only two of them THAT WEREN'T ALREADY STAINED WITH SOMETHING. Grrrr.

But the funny thing? When I went back to my desk after lunch, I eventually checked the receipt for the sweatshirt... and they charged me $35.99 for it! I don't know if it was an accident or it was secretly on sale or what, but... all that money angst and it was reasonably priced after all. Go figure.

I wore it the next day out to lunch. Where I ordered a red beverage. And didn't spill it. Go me.

Ironically, no sooner did I buy the sweatshirt than Mom calls me up the next day saying that she wants to come into town before the party and hit the school store to buy Alicia's graduation present. *insert eye-roll here*


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