Shop Silently

This is probably old news to many guys out there, but for those of us who are new to the whole marriage thing, here’s a handy tip: When you are shopping with your wife, keep your mouth shut.

I’m sure the same thing applies to girlfriends, mistresses, whatever. I’m just speaking from my own experience. Push the cart around, hold the bags, nod occasionally and make non-committal grunting noises so that she knows you’re still there. Just don’t say anything. There’s nothing about shopping that you can’t make worse by speaking.

First a little side digression here… When I was a kid, malls didn’t have those little kiosks everywhere. It was just hallways with shops. Now you can’t walk fifteen feet without bumping into a fake wheeled cart selling gumballs and cellphones. If you’re reading this and you’re one of those people who decides what kiosks go where, then I’ve got a question for you: Why the heck isn’t there a news stand outside the Victoria’s Secret shop? Seriously. Someplace where guys can stand around, buy newspapers and magazines and stand there reading while their gals are sorting through bins of bras. Set one up there, you’ll make a fortune.

Anyway, I was talking about talking. This weekend my Wife and I got some of the necessary shopping done for the upcoming trips. I was doing pretty good with the head nod and grunt routine for a while, then I made a mistake… My wife was complaining that they’d put the petite sizes right next to the extra large (aka “Women”) sizes with no gradation of sizes between them. I’d noticed a black outfit with the collar and cuffs trimmed in white. It looked like a cross between a nun’s habit and a 1960’s meter maid uniform.

“Just don’t get that. The white collar and cuffs are too much like a uniform…”

And at that moment I saw a woman wearing almost that identical outfit walking by and giving me a nasty look, as if I was critiquing her outfit instead of the one on the rack.

To make matters worse, my wife had moved on to a different rack of clothes and had just dropped a conversational landmine in front of me by asking a weight related fashion question. I have no idea what exactly it was that she said, but it doesn’t matter. There is no good response to any statement that includes both the words, “if I lost a little weight” and “what do you think?”

Even trying to come up with an answer requires careful thought and since I was still trying to cover my earlier gaffe, I just blurted out, “No, I don’t think you could.”

“WHAT?!?”

“What?”

“You don’t think I could lose weight!”

“No! Wear that! I mean I don’t think it’d could good! Too much of a uniform! On you!”

“What are you talking about?”

“That outfit.”

“This outfit?”

“No, the other one. There. The one that wouldn’t look good. On you.”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to go look at luggage. I’ll be over there.”