The Perfect Bathing Suit

Buying a woman's bathing suit is an impossible task, especially when you just want something plain and functional without paying an arm and a leg. This brings us to Saturday afternoon. I was two hours from a pool party and I had no bathing suit. Nothing like waiting for the last minute. We found ourselves out in Mentor on Saturday running errands when I decided we should go to Great Lakes Mall to continue my search for a bathing suit. Let me first admit I have never bought my own bathing suit before. Somehow my mom was born with the talent to pick out a perfect bathing suit for other people, and she has always bought my bathing suits. With no past experience in this department, I had no idea where to even start. I scanned the mall directory looking for a woman's apparel store assuming that is where you bought bathing suits. Apparently you can't just pick up a bathing suit at any store as I first started looking at Sears, which had very little to offer. Time continued to tick away as the search heated up. My next stop was Dillards. JACKPOT! They had bathing suits galore and just the style I was looking for. I will admit they were a little pricey, but there was no longer time to think about price. As I picked up the bathing suit to try on, the electricity went out in the entire store due to a storm. There weren't even emergency lights that came on. It was completely dark. People were pulling out cigarette lighters to find their way through the store. The odd part is that they weren't kicking people out, so I went ahead and tried the suit on thinking the lights would come back on soon. There was some sun shining through the dressing room and I could tell this was the suit for me. Even if it didn't look good in the light, I could tell it looked good in the dark, and I could at least save it for late-night pool parties. I decided to wait for the lights to come back on, and make my way to the front of the store where I thought there might still be working registers. On the way up I made the following call to my host, Mindy:

Me: Is it raining at your house?
Mindy: It just stopped. Why?
Me: I am stuck in the dark at Dillards in Mentor with the perfect bathing suit. I am willing to wait it out for the electricity to come back on if it is nice at your place, but if not I probably won't buy the suit.
Mindy: Uncontrollable laughter ensued followed by: Get the suit, it's nice here!

Once we were at the front of the store where light was shining in from the mall, the woman in the shoe department said her register was still working, and I was so excited. As she started to ring me up, she found out her register was no longer working as well. I began to wonder if they would just take cash with the tags of the suit, but the ATM was also down, so that wouldn't work either. We had a decision to make as we stood in the dark with the managers finally telling people they needed to leave: steal this suit knowing the security system was also down or go to TJ Maxx. I hate to admit that this decision was a tough one. My scruples were diminshed by the fact I had found the perfect suit and time was ticking away. We did the right thing though and I bought a much cheaper, poorly fitting suit at TJ Maxx, which of course began to fall apart at the party.

Moral of the story: Always take a flashlight and cash with you when purchasing a bathing suit during a storm. (This is something most people would never tell you, which is why you are lucky I am here to help you with these future predicaments.)