Men, take notes...

When a woman asks you to 'watch her bag'...watch her bag.

Casey wanted new shoes this weekend. The last pair of new shoes he got, not so long ago, were Adidas, made with some kind of white fabric with a few green stripes on them. I asked him at the time to get something besides white fabric. What does Mom know? Well, apparently that you can't keep white fabric anywhere near clean when they're on the feet of a 16 year old boy. I mean, they'd be hard to keep clean on any guy...but at size 15, they're hard to put in the wash and would kill my dryer. And let's face it, he's not going to clean them by hand (I think he did for the first month maybe...) and I'm not going to do it after warning him about them. Okay, I did a few times too...but do you know how big a size 15 is?? It's about a 3 hour job to clean them...would be easier to run them through a car wash.
Back to this weekend. Mark didn't work Saturday (he usually goes into the office for a few hours three Saturdays a month) so all of us went shopping. The first thing that ticked me off was when we got out of the car, Mark and the boys are walking about three feet in front of me. Yeah, okay, so I'm a bit slow because I'm still favoring my right knee. However, even if I were crawling on one knee and an elbow, they should wait for me. Walk beside me. I stop and say "excuse me", and they wait for me. They tease me the entire time, but they waited.
The first store we visited was Nike. After walking around for awhile, Casey picks out a pair. The largest we could find was a size 13. He decides to try them on, just in case they run big. My baby, the dreamer. So he and I sit as he tries them on and Mark is standing watching. His big toe cries for help as he crams his foot in. Seriously, I can hear it. But I'm a woman and we know shoe pain. (* Side note: One word...Crocs. No more pain...ever)
Okay, back to the shoe not fitting. Casey sits there, Mark stands there...like the shoe is gonna grow??? So, I tell them to watch my bag and I'll see if they carry it in a larger size. I walk around the aisle, ask a store clerk and, no, size 13 is the largest. I walk back to where we were sitting and there are strangers sitting on each side of my bag. I kid you not, I wasn't gone 20 seconds, if that long. I'm looking around to see if they're at least in the same aisle where they could keep an eye on it, but no, they're nowhere near the aisle. I can't believe they just walked off and left my bag there. I excused myself, reaching between two women and pick up my bag. So, yeah, I'm mad. And what makes me even more angry is that they just don't get it. Casey said he forgot (in 20 seconds???) and Mark just shrugged and said he didn't notice.
Men, give me a break. Would you take out your wallet (containing all your cash, bank and credit cards, license), your car keys, a $300 pair of glasses, your cell phone and all the other essentials that you carry, put them in a pile in a crowd of total strangers and just walk off? So what makes a woman's bag less important? Just telling about it now makes me angry. C'mon, the bag itself cost over a hundred bucks, not alone everything in it and considering the hassle it would be to replace and cancel everything in it. Yeah, I should have carried it with me. What was I thinking that 2 full grown men would be able to guard one small bag between them?? Bottom line, we give men way too much credit sometimes.
The shoes? Neither the Nike or Adidas stores carried shoes large enough for Casey, at least not in shoes he wanted. Footlocker and the likes carry some but not all shoes in his size. We came home without shoes. He went onto Nikes web site and most of what he picked out didn't come in sizes larger than 13. He finally bought a pair on line, for around $120. Mark can't understand why Caseys shoes should cost so much, and yet he walked off with the equivalent of, at the very least, 10 times that much sitting on a bench in a crowd without a second thought. Men...

With that said, yes, I do love my guys. All of them. But that doesn't mean I'm not tempted to occasionally smother them in their sleep.