Shopping trip could end in hell | Coffs Coast Opinion | Local Voices from Coffs Coast, Australia

IF you’re planning a mother-and-daughter shopping trip to buy clothes for your 13-year-old daughter I only have one word to say to you – don’t.

Don’t do it. Spare yourself (and all the other people within earshot) the aggravation, frustration and humiliation and just stay at home and order something from a catalogue, preferably something that comes in a bottle.

While I acknowledge my little girl is growing up and can’t be expected to go through life in pastel pink Barbie dresses and shiny white-patent shoes with lace-edged socks forever, I’m also not comfortable with the idea of her parading around in outfits that look like they need to be accessorised with 10 tattoos, a Harley-Davidson and a parole officer.

Naturally our disastrous shopping trip had been preceded with the universal call to shop.

It’s a call that can be heard echoing out over every continent in every language. From the hills of Hollywood to the snows of Siberia and over the sands of the Sahara it’s always the same call –‘I’ve got nothing to wear’. You don’t honestly think those Bedouin women who have been traipsing over the Sahara desert all these years were just chasing goats do you? No way. Those ladies got the goss there was a discount shopping outlet somewhere out there and they’re not leaving until they find it.

No one more than me can understand the primal consumer urge to shop. Give me a flashing red light, a bargain rack and a two-for-one sale and I’m in Nirvana. But even my firmly long-held belief of ‘you can never shop too long or too hard’ was shaken after a session at the Plaza with my youngest last Thursday night.

It’s fair to say the only thing we agreed on was where to park the car. After that it was all pretty much downhill.

As we walked into the first shop the first thing my darling child did was hiss , ‘Don’t embarrass me, mum’. Embarrass? Me? That’s rich coming from a child who until the age of four used to pee in her pusher every time we out in public.

By the third shop the tension had kicked up a few notches so, in an effort to ease the situation (yes, we had ourselves a ‘situation’ by this stage) I took a deep breath, took a hanger off the rack, held it up near her and said, ‘This is nice, the colour is beautiful, I bet it would look lovely on you’.

“Mum you’re embarrassing me.”

What was she talking about? ‘Embarrassing’ would be me running around the shop swinging my knickers over my head and singing show tunes, all I did was make a wardrobe suggestion.

“Let me just remind you before you roll your eyes so far in to the back of your head that we’ll need surgery to get them out again, it’s my wallet paying for this little shopping safari so that also buys me the right to make the odd suggestion or comment.”

“Well, I’d rather die than wear that dress.”

Oh the irony. She had no idea how close she was to getting her wish granted.

Of course everything the stick thin, mono-syllabic, gum chewing, green eye-shadow wearing young sales assistant suggested was gospel. That girl could have held up a garbage bag (and at one point I thought she had) and my youngest would have jumped at it.

We finally left the Plaza after several hours with several bags (mostly under my eyes) and me vowing never to return. Well, not until I do Christmas shopping, Boxing day sales and the January clearances.

“So what do you want for Chrissie,” I asked my youngest in an attempt to make up as we headed back to the car.

“Clothes.”

“Ughh, I’d rather die than go clothes shopping with you again.”

And going by the death stare she flashed me, I was about to get my wish right there in the car park.