I’m not a shopper.  I’m the kind of person who runs into a store as though under time clock pressure, grabs the item in question, tries on twelv pairs, likes one, buys it, and leaves.

And yet when it came time to try on jeans, I still found myself pondering…

-When did we all decide it was okay for jeans to cost as much as a monthly car payment?

-Who needs jeans so low-cut they deserve their own gynecologist?

-Why are jeans that looked bad in 1988/1992 back in style?

-That said, I miss my old Levi’s.  No, probably I just miss the me that wore them, eg the me of my youth, oh – and I miss my old car, complete with the burn mark in the backseat from when Mike Hovance dropped a cigarette I told him he shouldn’t have in the first place out the window and it flew back into the car. No, I don’t miss my youth, I miss the jean that I loved so long that they became cut-offs and then, like Cat Stevens sang, vanished away. And then, in the midst of my denim revery, this thought:

-OH MY GOD THERE’S A COCKROACH IN MY PANTS!

On the list of items one hopes not to find in a garment, a cockroach has to be right up there.  I was at a store that prides itself on aesthetics, on urban hipsterdom (so much so that all of the items except jeans were unwearable unless you are a 23 year old quirky, wide-eyed awkward librarian).  I had the quickly nabbed pile of denim, had gone through all but one pair, stuck my leg in only to think “Hmmm…was that a security tag that just went down the leg and onto the floor?” Why, no.  That was a giant, dead cockroach.

And that, kids, is why Mummy doesn’t like shopping.

How about some honey cake instead?