I went to Target by myself : Storytime

Hey guys, it’s me again.

So, I’ve always been a pretty… dependent person (for lack of a better word). When I was younger, my parents would never let me go to the store or to the park by myself. Every shopping trip ended up being a family trip. I mean, if one of my parents was busy or at work, we just wouldn’t go. Now that I’m older, November and I spend basically every day together. We always go grocery shopping together, I tag along whenever she wants to go clothes shopping, she’ll hang out with me when I really want to make a trip to Best Buy; it’s great. Notice how I have to really want to shop for her to come with, but I go with whenever she wants… No big.

This past weekend was a little different. We normally take Lucy to the groomer every few weeks, but we weren’t able to the weekend before due to the hurricane that passed through. November was at work so I had to take Lucy up to the groomer by myself. Normally when this happens I’ll just hang out at the pet store or something for the hour it usually takes. This time I decided to be a little adventurous and head to the Target across the street by myself.

A lot of you are reading this thinking, “what’s the big deal? So what, you went to the store?” But understand when I say I never, ever have just walked around a store by myself for no reason, I mean that I have never walked around a store by myself for absolutely no reason. It’s kind of weird walking around looking at all of the different products and displays without having someone there to talk to about how cool that one shirt is or how that one water bottle looks kind of like a d*ck (this was an actual thing I saw and I was kind of upset there wasn’t anyone to laugh with about it).

Back to the experience… what is the first thing I do when alone and left to my own devices? I text November to check if she needs anything from Target.

She tells me she needs dry shampoo, and that I should get this certain one for myself too. So here I am, phone in hand, feeling like the most stereotypical of stereotypical males trying to find this random hair product my girlfriend wants me to pick up. I look lost, but I rejoice in seeing the other random guys on the phone with their wives/girlfriends who are trying to describe what that one specific body wash they always buy is and not understanding how he doesn’t remember that she has to buy the purple one because the blue one makes her skin too oily and… you get the point. We’ve all been there.

Of course, in the middle of this a woman probably in her mid-fifties with this dark red hair stops me and holds a box of hair dye up to my face and asks me, “Is this the right color? Does it look the same as my hair?” Like, lady, I am a guy in my twenties who has never dyed my hair, how am I supposed to know if that’s the same hair dye you always buy? So I respond with a, “Uh yeah, it looks about the same,” and she threw the dye in her basket and went on her merry way. Later in the day November said I probably ruined her life by not actually checking if it was the right color. Whoops.

So yeah, nothing else too interesting happened. I ran into an old friend who now works at Target, played around with the new iPhone that I really want, got that dry shampoo we needed, paid for my stuff, and left. I guess it was actually a pretty normal shopping experience, I got what November needed and what she told me I needed, I just didn’t get to do it with anyone. Maybe I’ll try it again some other time, when I know what I’m looking for…

I’m still not going to the movies by myself anytime soon.

Catch you next time – E