The First Lady has a pronounced fondness for shopping. She's not the only one in the world who loves shopping, nor does she have any complexes about it. In her opinion, in the moments of sadness and despondency of life, buying a dress, a designer bowl or a small bag produces much more joy, excitement and satisfaction than anything else - and renewing new shoes once every few months is both effective and much more economical than ongoing psychological therapy (with all due respect to the psychologist's desire to finance another shopping trip).
Most women I know know how to shop for their clothes alone, without their husband turning between their legs and making overdraft faces. But when a man accidentally stumbles into a shopping scene, or when you're on a couple trip abroad and you accompany her for an entire day on a mochilleros journey between brand stores, you can see male unhappiness from miles away.
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Groups of exhausted men are thrown on some uncomfortable chairs in the male ghetto on the outskirts of the clothing store, looking as if they are waiting outside the maternity room for the birth of a dress, with everyone looking off stuck in their mobile. If the damn boutique expresses no interest in representatives of the inferior and sandal-loving sex, and has not bothered to organize any sedentary solution for them, they stand aside like idiots with the bags from the previous stores or lean against the wall and move their leg so that it does not end up circumcised. In this situation, desperate men tend to lose their humanity. I've seen men sit on the store carpet, lie down on the floor and put their heads on their bags, try to hang themselves on a hanger or just fall asleep in the store bathroom or in a fitting booth.
And these are other good cases - because if your partner is of the sharing type and finds it difficult to make decisions, forget about rest and prepare to express opinions on matters in which you have no interest. You're supposed to wait for her outside the fitting booth and express a reasoned opinion on every model, color and size – even though you have trouble distinguishing between a Louis Vuitton jacket and an Uncle Bitten sweatshirt. The stingy tactic may make you say that nothing is nice about her and thus kill the purchase and leave without harm, but most women are familiar with this trick and will continue measuring until you beg her to buy something and allow you to move on, even if in order to finance the event you will have to sell a kidney.
Therefore, it is better to be honest and honest and tell only the truth. If you lie and tell her about something ugly that is beautiful, you will find yourself the next day again in the same store, lying about another item. In difficult cases, even a buy recommendation does not solve the problem. There are those who, after buying an outfit in a certain boutique, open her appetite, she feels a shwang and continues the purchase of the dress by completing the set with a matching coat and shoes in another store.
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The question "How is it about me?" is a trap. Therefore, be careful with repentance, because any word said may be used against you. One should mainly avoid the root shaman with all its biases, and try to flatter as much as possible. And when it's really not that, explain positively to her that "it sits on you pix, but doesn't bring out your special personality correctly, and that outfit is just not you. You're much more classy." Alternatively, you could say that "the problem is that in this garment Bar Refaeli will also look like Tzachi Noy, and whoever designed this garment simply hates women" - hoping that she will understand that you meant to compare her to Bar Refaeli and not to Tzachi Noy.
In my case, one of the serious problems is that sometimes the First Lady feels uncomfortable with the amount of her purchases, and the need to balance and create a kind of parity between her purchases and mine. Of course, in that case her conclusion would not be to reduce her purchases, but to increase mine, which leads her to pressure me to purchase clothes I don't need. Sometimes I suspect that she is premeditating the purchase of clothes for me, only to obtain moral legitimacy that she is about to embark on another shopping spree for her. It's not that I don't like new clothes, and when I see well-dressed Italian men I certainly understand the gaps between me and them, but the Israeli hourliness, the cost of living, my basic stinginess and the packed closet make it difficult for me to flow, let go and take out the Italian half of me.
I usually manage to avoid shopping with various excuses of impartiality, inappropriate mood, or claiming that Gucci's new collection doesn't have anything that feels accurate to my styling, but sometimes, especially before holidays and festive events, I find myself in some mall, led between stores and forced to measure shirts and pants with a look I know from other men, which is mostly 180 degrees opposite of enthusiasm, And a broadcast that I would prefer to be held captive by ISIS now and measure an orange jumpsuit, just not here.
And if I really want to upset her, I tell her that all this is unnecessary because I have a lot of clothes - after all, as far as she is concerned, the entire contents of my closet deserve to be flame material for the Lag B'Omer campfire based on reasonable wear and tear, lack of style and fashion irrelevance, which disqualifies her from even being used as rags in our detergent and broom warehouse. I, on the other hand, can continue to walk in the same rags I'm used to without any problem, even though sometimes I realize that I look like a homeless person in them, and knowing that if I keep hanging out with them next to my wife, soon I might really become one.
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A few weeks ago, on the way back from the mall we passed by a paint and tool store, I thought this was an opportunity to perform a sneaky little revenge exercise. I told the lady I wanted to buy some things for the house, and we went into the store. Although my home repair skills are reminiscent of my fashion sense, I sometimes enjoy the thought of buying me new tools, extension cords, drills, screwdrivers, shavings, screws and nails, and anything that will fill my home toolbox.
It's true that after buying I don't really use them, and it's a shame that there are no stores that allow you to rent tools for a period, such as a wedding dress, at the end of which you will return them like new. Anyway, I thought it was an opportunity to return in the same currency, or on the same credit card, and waste her time on things she had no interest in, carefully examining the types of hammers, adhesives, sprinklers, and mousetraps, including asking her questions like how the Jabka sits on me and what color of jixo saw suits me best.
While I was stuck in front of a shelf of dowels, and while defiantly asking her what suits my personality better - red or gray dibble, and wondering if there are measuring booths here so I can see if the Swedish key goes well with an ABBA shirt, I discovered that the lady was not by me at all. Fifteen minutes later, she popped up with a cart unusually loaded with paint cans, brushes, locomotives and glue guns, happy and energetic. "You're a genius," she told me, "it was a perfect idea to come in here. I was very impressed and decided to paint and paint the house, and that we would do it alone, you and I. What do you think of that color?"
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