Two Days with Four Females  

(Obviously this is a Charlie story)

Taking your wife, step-daughter and her friends to shop for two days sounds a tad boring from a male perspective.  It’s more like a roving Discovery channel production with my wife’s gene pool.  You see nature uninhibited.  Wildlife isn’t scripted.  Neither are teenaged girls mall-prowling in Seattle.

Once we got off the train and on the hunt, I noticed the nervous excitement.  It’s the same eagerness you see in lion cubs.  They play and run around independently yet they’re timid and often hang close to their mother.

They walked fast enough to pretend to have nothing to do with us.  They paid a price for this independence.  We no sooner got off the train when two guys approached them and wanted them to go to a party.  More street urchins approached them and offered them fake IDs.  Within minutes, they’re preyed upon. 

They stop and listen politely.  Right in the middle of the conversation, the big tough General screams, “Mommy!  Mommy!” and runs back over to us.

“Jessi and Nicci are talking to those guys!” she says.  “They want us to go to a bar.  Tell them to come over here!”

I approached the guys.  When they saw me coming, they slithered away.  This is typical Discovery channel show behavior, I thought, and proof of natural world events to come.

“Why did you talk to those guys?” the General said.  “I can’t believe you’d talk to those guys.”

“I don’t know,” Jessi said.  Jessi’s very no-nonsense and would be too serious without the General cutting up.  She’s mature but too polite to be rude to cute, prowling guys.

Nicci just giggles.  She’ll go along with anything as long as everyone’s polite.

I noticed they walked faster and ahead of us again.  Their pace was more purposeful; their arms interlocked.  They reminded me of the Wizard of Oz, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

We made it to the hotel.  The first clerk to see them immediately smiled when he saw them.  The hotel manager came over and said, “His name is Rodrigo.  He likes it when you roll your r’s when you say it.” 

“Rrrrod-rrrrigo,” they said over and over.  Rrrrod-rrrrigo was pretty happy.  So happy that the manager took over the transaction while he continued to smile and stare.

The manager liked them, too.  She gave them a deluxe suite with a view of the ocean for no extra charge.  She looked at the General when she spoke her instructions.  She gave her the keys, not us.

What are we, I’m thinking.  Crap?  We should get a good room since we’re paying.  That’s not how it works in nature.  When the clerk drools and the manager laughs, the girls get the best room in the hotel for free.

“I can’t stop you from cat-calling,” the manager says, “that’s inevitable.  But please, don’t swear or spit at the guests.”

“Oh we won’t,” Jessi says right away.

Nicci stands there, smiling so cute.

The manager looks at me.  “You’re on a lower floor.”

“That’s not right,” I say.  Everyone stared at me so I shut up.  When you’re outnumbered, you have to blend in.  You have to pick your battles.

After they preened and feathered their suite with clothes and make-up, they came by to get their chaperones. 

“This is tiny.”

The General opened the window.  “Oh, great view,” she said of the air conditioning unit two feet from our window.  “Sucks to be you.”

We couldn’t delay shopping any longer, so we herded the girls away from predators as best we could and got them downtown.  They ran to the closest, biggest, most expensive make-up store I’ve ever seen.  They scattered throughout the store like a SWAT team in a choreographed tactical assault.  They moved so fast we couldn’t even see them.  They were like bullets ricocheting off the wall.

They weren’t ready to buy so we descended on a fancy mall.  Jill had a gift card from a store here, so we left the girls at a neighboring Abercrombie.  We figured with all the noise and other shopping girls to prey on, they’d be safe. 

“This is an old lady’s store,” I said loudly.  “What are we doing in here?”

“Shhh!”

There’s usually a husband’s seat at these kind of stores.  It’s usually a lone seat by the door.  This one was occupied by a UPS guy and the store clerk.  “Uh-oh,” I said. “The UPS guy’s hitting on the employees.”

The clerk was much older than the UPS guy.  “No, no,” he said, “it’s nothing like that.  We’re just talking.  We’re friends.”

“I’m just kidding,” I said.  Of course you’re just talking.  Duh.

The UPS guy left and the clerk went back to her register.  Jill found some clothes that didn’t look like they’d fit an old lady and went to try them on.  I sat in my rightful place on the husband’s bench.

The clerk immediately said, “He’s much younger than me.  Nothing is going on.”

I thought to myself that these two really lacked a sense of humor.

“I’m teasing.”

“His girlfriend broke up with him and he’s very depressed.  I was trying to console him.”

I felt bad for joking around.  “I’m sorry.”

Jill walked by so I said to the clerk, “Isn’t she hot?”   

The clerk agreed but Jill doesn’t acknowledge a compliment.  “If my butt wasn’t so big, I could fit into a smaller size,” Jill said.  “Everything is too big everywhere except for the butt.”

“You don’t have a big butt,” the clerk said.  “I look at butts all day and you don’t have a big butt.  That’s the smallest butt I’ve seen in here in a long time.”

Jill got embarrassed and ran off back into the dressing room.

From then on, I was on a quest.  I sat there and looked at every woman who came in the store.  Specifically, I watched their butts.  I stared at all the mid-thirties Mom butts shopping and walking.  The clerk was right.  I’m so used to my own wife’s butt that everyone else’s looked huge.  They were well-dressed but their butts were way out of whack.

Some women’s butts look like men’s butts.  Some of those women’s butts were shaped like an upside-down funnel.  Other ones were a right-side up funnel with saddle bags down by the bottom of their butt cheeks.  What the hell causes this?  Is it the way they sit or something else?

A woman walked by and I stared.  Look at how wide that one is, I thought.  I started worrying I’d get slapped by this obvious butt-watching. 

What happened?  I don’t remember women being so bottom-heavy.  If they’re not young, they’re wide. I’m not picky.  I don’t have an anorexic standard.  I guess I haven’t kept up.

Another woman stepped in the store.  This woman’s shape was different than the others.  The fat stuck to the top of her butt on each side.  Boom, boom, boom, the blobs at the top of her butt go when she walks.  I would not normally give these butts the first glance but now I’m doing research.  I’m on a quest to see if other women have butts shaped like my wife’s.

My wife can’t find anything to fit her butt.  Since she has a gift card, she has to continue the hunt.  I tell her about the women who have disproportionate butts.

Maybe that’s why they’re shopping,” she says.

“I don’t know of any exercise that can get rid of butt fat,” I say, realizing I’ve had a butt study epiphany.  “It must be really hard.  You can’t do sit-ups.”

“Lunges,” she says.  “You have to do lots of lunges.”

“Maybe that’s why your butt’s so good.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve done lunges,” she says.  “Too hard.”

My wife and her butt return to the dressing room.  The clerk looks over and says, “I’m sorry.  I talk a lot and I have to insist on talking if there’s someone to talk to.”

“I understand completely,” I said.  “I have a wife just like that.”  Although her butt’s not as big as yours, I thought to myself.

She kept on asking me questions and complimenting me.  It’s nice to be sucked up to, even if it’s only because she knew we were going to spend money.  Being sucked up to is why people go on vacations and shopping is cheaper than going on a cruise.

Something happened to Nicci, the General’s giggling friend.  The next thing I saw was the General chasing Nicci around in public.  “It’s mine,” the General yelled.  “It’s my cell phone!”

The General tried to tackle Nicci, but Nicci kicked right back and didn’t even flinch.  She got up and ran off again.  The General looked at me like she was the sweet, giggling, picked-on one.

I felt like I needed to do something to reinforce my maleness in this female habitat.  The minute my wife and her small butt was finished I knew where I was heading.  The girls can chase each other out on the streets somewhere.  They’ve developed the necessary skills to survive for a while.  I need a beer.

A little help? [] 6:27:41 PM