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Manly Shopping

A little while back, my siblings and I wanted to get my mom some jewelry for Mother's Day. We figured she'd appreciate it, and it was one of those gifts that seems more appropriate for a "we appreciate you" type occasion. However, we're all geographically spread out, so it's not like we could arrange a group outing to find something. And despite our best efforts, nothing we saw online quite seemed to match the style we were looking for. So, one of us had to make a run to a store and see what we could find. That someone would be me.

If you're a regular follower of this blog, this should sound vaguely familiar. I've had some adventures purse shopping for my mom before, and even going into stores geared towards women has some interesting consequences. So, you might expect more of the same this time around. I'd walk in, feel a little awkward, and there would be some laughs at my expense.

Not this time around. This was like the manliest version of shopping I could have expected, actually.

You see, I walked in, and the style I was looking for was conveniently near the front. I don't know if all jewelry stores arrange their merchandise this way, but that meant that one of the more junior associates/sales people ended up helping me. In hindsight, this set the tone for the entire affair.

He was a friendly guy, and because he was relatively new, he also didn't have that veneer of "I work with high end merchandise." Don't get me wrong, the guy knew what he was doing, and he wasn't unprofessional my any means. But he didn't judge me based on my clothes, nor did he have any disdain for my selections. All in all, he was one of the guys. Which worked out perfectly for me.

See, part of the problem was that I knew what I was looking for, but I didn't necessarily have the vocabulary for it. I speak English well enough that I can accurately convey my thoughts most of the time, but I simply don't use these types of adjectives and nouns required to describe jewelry very often. Even worse, some of the words that I know aren't in English. So, things got interesting.

In my mind, I wanted a rather elegant design. Something that didn't have a ton of frills and that wasn't overly flashy. Think something more suited for a nice dinner or cocktail party rather than the club. Now, the word "elegant" comes to mind, but that's more of a general feeling than a description of a particular style. So when presented with a particularly flashy set of earrings, I wanted to tell the guy that I wanted something "sin tanto adorno." The important word there is "adorno," which means roughly adornment or ornament. But I couldn't just bust that out, and I also knew that "adornment" is a pretty rare word in English. In the heat of the moment, the best I could do was, "um, can I see something with less ... flair?"

The guy laughed at me, but he knew what I meant. Like I said, he was just another one of the guys, so he was on the same page as I was. In fact, as we were talking, I happened to mention that I was curious about the outcome of the Manny Pacquiao/Floyd Mayweather fight (boxing match, if you don't follow combat sports). It was one of those big sporting events that was going on that weekend, but I'm guessing they didn't exactly hear tons about it in that store. This guy, however, not only had a rooting interest (we were both rooting against Mayweather), but mentioned that he was heading to a buddy's house immediately after work to drink beers and watch the fight.

After I'd finished picking out what I wanted, he walked me over to the cashier area, and wished me well. He threw in a, "have fun watching the fight," and we said our good byes. The guy ringing me up, however, heard that, and immediately asked who I was rooting for. We also ended up talking about boxing, so the conversation just kept right on going.

The final touch, though, was when he asked me if I wanted a ribbon wrapped around the gift. I figured it couldn't hurt, so I assented to this plan. As he was wrapping the ribbon, though, I commented that I was glad it was him doing it and not me. I can wrap one decently enough, but I don't have the requisite practice to make the finishing touches look nice. Worse yet, I'd recently jammed my finger playing basketball, so I was in no shape to do a good job. He remarked that his ring finger was also pretty much shot from basketball, so he'd had to learn to do it without using that finger much. Yup, we had a full blown conversation about basketball injuries and jammed fingers as a result of a pretty ribbon.

I didn't say anything at the time, but when I walked out of the store, I remember thinking that was about the manliest way possible that whole thing could have gone. I used a comedic reference from Office Space to describe the item I wanted, I discussed an upcoming boxing match with several folks, there was mention of beer, and I made a connection with someone over minor injuries from pickup basketball.

Next time I need to buy any kind of jewelry, I'm going back to that store.

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