A SPLASH OF COLOR--LITERALLY

Nowadays I suppose its simpler to give gift cards as birthday presents. Nothing wrong with them...it's just that when you have 5 kids going to various stores is never ideal. And the younger ones don't understand why the older ones are getting presents and they're not. So the gift cards pile up until one day I need to bribe the kids to do something and the reward is "I'll take you to the mall and we can use your giftcards!" Many a rooms have been cleaned with this tactic--so its my go to when I need help. Last Saturday we went to the Mall. My oldest daughter Graceann was really excited to use her giftcards--and mind you some of these were from 5 years ago. It's a wonder they had any money left on them. One of the cards was for a store called Delias. It's a cute store...mostly teenage clothing...although if I had a cute little bod--I wouldn't mind shopping there. So when we entered the sales lady started yakking away to my daughter Graceann. I swear I understand English but my "teen talk" is not quite there. Graceann translated and apparently told me that the sales girl told her that if she tried on a pair of jeans she would get 10 dollars off her purchase. I laughed at Graceann's naiveness. Why would anyone take 10 dollars off just for trying a pair of jeans. I told Graceann she must have misunderstood. Now my "teen talk" kicked in and I told Grace that you probably got 10 dollars off a pair of jeans if you buy them...and I'm sure they're ove 85 dollars to start with. So we looked around. And Graceann found what she wanted to buy with her gift card. The only "slight" problem is that she wanted to buy 102 dollars more than her gift card was worth. We narrowed our choices and after about 45 minutes decided on 3 different options that still cost more than the gift card was worth but significantly less than the 102 dollars. And we didn't try on jeans and we weren't buying jeans so we weren't getting 10 dollars taken off our bill. Low and behold we bring our purchases to the cash register and the sales lady asks Graceann if she tried on any jeans. She announced they were having a promotion and all you had to do was try on jeans and even if you didn't buy them you would receive 10 dollars off your order. My language of teens really is rusty....where have I been. Well just as fast as I was going to tell Grace to go try on a pair of jeans, I hear a loud crashing sound. It came from the nailpolish rack...and my daughter Pauline was the one right near it. Nail polish scattered and smashed everywhere. The floor was a beautiful shade of lilac. And when I say nail polish was everywhere....I mean everywhere. It was one of those moments when I wanted to say, "Little girl...do you want me to help find your mom?" I mean how could one of my kids make such a mess...but she did. At that point I didn't care about trying on jeans or getting 10 dollars off my order (although it would have been a nice discount)....I figured we must have smashed over 10 dollars of nail polish...so we would be better off cutting our losses and run. So we paid our bill and ran out of there as fast as we could. I am sure there is a WANTED poster of my face at their front door. Well that didn't bother me because we used up the gift card and theres no reason to go back....until Grace told me that she really doesn't think the tee-shirt she got is the right fit and she needs to exchange it for a smaller size...maybe this time I'll try and leave my 5 kids home....and if I do....I'll try on a pair of jeans.