Mother Daughter Mug Shot

It started with a prophetic facebook status.

“My life is a series of misadventures.”

And this statement rang true today, loud and clear.

Sticky too.

Amy (our oldest daughter) and I made a quick run to Elder-Beerman, the local upscale department store, to get her a white cami shirt. The girl is blossoming this summer and it’s sending Matt and I into parental conniptions. But she is enjoying these leaps and bounds into adulthood, and we have no choice but to let her grow up as much as we can stand.

Amy is one of those kids who follows the rules. All the time. You tell her to do something a certain way, she goes through every step. Because of this , she is probably the most reliable kid in the world. She is working this summer on losing her baby fat, and when I suggest that she needs to give up the chips and have a salad, she does it every time. How I raised a child with that much willpower, I will never know.

So we were in the van, discussing where to get the cami, and we saw that Elder-Beerman was having a yellow dot sale. Everything is marked on sale, and you get an additional 60% off the sale price. We thought that would be a great place to start.

Within 3 minutes she found what she needed, but it was Mama who lingered, enjoying alone time with my budding daughter. It reminded me of all the trips Margaret the Saint and I made to the exact same store years ago. Although Amy is nothing like me, so there wasn’t any fighting or tears or begging with this Mother and Daughter Duo.

I found a clearance shirt too, and happily we headed up to the counter to bring our shopping journey to an end. However there was no tag on my shirt, so one of the associates headed off to find another one like it. Setting my coffee mug on the counter (I don’t go anywhere without my coffee before 3pm) I started telling her I had looked for another one like it, and couldn’t find one, so I didn’t know the price.

She asked what area of the store we found the shirt, and I circled around to point to a corner.
As I was circling around, with my hand gracefully extended to act the part of a hoyty-toyty shopper in a department store, that was when Amy and I got the most interesting science lesson.

When a coffee mug is precariously placed on a 4 foot high counter, and it gets knocked over, the 32 ounce travel mug does not simply fall to the floor. In fact, it bounces on the floor, the lid pops off, and 32 ounces of coffee immediately explodes onto the floor.

Thankfully, we were not near clothes. It hit tile floor.

Unfortunately, it does splash on your blossoming and highly emberassable 10 year old daughter, and she stands there looking like her mother has just committed a hainus crime of prision sentence proportions.

So there we are, standing in the middle of a seemingly posh department store, in a puddle of French vanilla humiliation. We couldn’t run. You can’t run on wet tile. Plus we still wanted our shirts. As associate number 1 scurried off to look for a twin for my unmarked shirt, associate number 2 had to stand there with us and try to make conversation for the next 5 minutes.

Customer number 1 (obviously not my daughter and I) was giving me the stink eye. You could tell she was glad it wasn’t her, and moved seamlessly from utter sympathy – “were you drinking hot chocolate, dear?” “No, it was French vanilla coffee. I don’t go anywhere without it.” “Perhaps there are some places you should consider leaving it at home.”- to full on condemnation.

I was left wondering how much longer the janitorial staff was going to take to the scene of our crime, and Amy was still standing there with her jaw hanging on the floor.

And I started to laugh. And the associate number 2 began to giggle. Customer one did not see the humor in our predicament.

Meanwhile, customers 2 through 7 lined up behind us. (of course. My shame is never private.) And none of them seemed to get the joke either. I could feel their eyes drilling holes in the back of my head as they stood in line for the worst checkout in the county.

Amy finally began to laugh herself, making comments about how she can’t take her mom anywhere (she’s right) and telling herself that at least she was getting a shirt out of the deal.

Associate number 1 finally returned, announcing that she couldn’t find another shirt like the one I had, and rang up another shirt in its place. We stood around for a minute after we checked out, waiting for the clean up crew. I have no idea why we did that, it just seemed like the right thing to do. I was hoping my daughter would get some sort of morality lesson out of this. Maybe “we clean up our own messes” or “you stay till the job is finished.” However, with no mop or paper towels to help us, all we could do was LOOK at our mess. MY MESS.

Amy grinned and said “I told you to leave it in the van.”

I could hear customers 2 through 7 snicker that I had been schooled by my 10 year old daughter, and I decided that the moral lesson was over.

Walking out, Amy giggled and said, “You better buy what you want now, Mom. I don’t think we will be allowed back in here ever again.”

I looked at my daughter and said, “We will just add this store to the list, honey.”

(Big Lots, Big R, Elder-Beerman)