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Shopping for clothes is tough when you're vertically challenged and...

So I went shopping for a special function with my friend J. I needed shoes, she was looking for a dress. I figured, hell, there are so many sales, maybe I'll look for a few other things. And it seemed whatever we tried on, we knew in our hearts and in our guts that everything would look so much better on us if we weren't...as J. put it so well - vertically challenged. Tall women have an easier time of it. J. told me that in her next life she was coming back as a thin five foot ten blond (with straight hair). I said I'd take curly hair and if I were a redhead that would be okay, too.

But here we were in this life...too damn short! And then I had this sick, sad thought that not only was growing a few inches no longer a possibility, we were going to be facing SHRINKAGE! If we were vertically challenged now what would we be like in ten years? Twenty? My son who's already a foot taller than me (he's fortunately not vertically challenged and I don't know where he got that growth gene) will end up being so much taller than me I'll need a step ladder just to have a face-to-face with him.

Okay, being vertically challenged wasn't the only problem J and I faced on our shopping jaunt. She tried on two dresses. I thought they both looked terrific. She was ambivalent. Yeah, partly she wasn't sure if she really loved the dresses but the other part was what really struck me. "I have to show them to D. (J.'s husband) and see if he thinks they're.......

Old Lady Dresses!!

Huh? What exactly is an old lady dress? An old lady blouse? Pants? I could go on and on. Now my daughter the fashionista has frequently seen me in something that she has announced looks like an old lady whatever? I look at her in utter puzzlement. Obviously when I bought the whatever it never crossed my mind that it was an old lady whatever. No, let me go even further on this topic. I really don't have the foggiest what an old lady whatever looks like. It apparently has something to do with pattern and cut. I think cardigans are old lady. But when twenty and thirty-somethings wear them, they're not.

And styles are always changing. What was acceptable last year is not just unacceptable to wear this year. This year it looks like something an old lady would wear.

But, hey, I'm sort of an old lady. When I said this to my daughter she was aghast. Not because she doesn't accept the fact that I'm no spring chicken. No, the issue is "Mom, you don't want to look like an old lady.

That's only one side of the coin. The other, naturally, is, you're too old to wear that! 

So, I'm vertically challenged and my clothes are either too old or too young for me.

I'll tell you if I weren't so mortally shy I'd just join a nudist colony and call it a day!

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