This past weekend we went downtown. This trip was mostly to take the kids to buy used books and comics at Chamblin Bookmine, but we stumbled upon Pogopalooza and friends at Hemming Plaza and made a day out of it. At the plaza, the kids ate Bold City Pops and beautiful girls hawked vintage finds. I went from tent to tent, feasting my eyes on clothes of every pattern, feeling my fingers run over moth eaten fabric, my mind running over what I was feeling. What I felt was old. I felt old. Years ago, this very set up would make me so giddy I would buy shit for the sake of buying shit. Now I know polyester makes me stink, and that it is impossible to alter anything with pleats by myself. That no, no matter what I told myself or how cute it was, I would never use a purse with a strap that short. There were the mental negotiations – twenty dollars spent here is twenty dollars not spent on groceries, on Foos. I left the tents empty handed, feeling guilty for chatting up the impossible girls, drinking their lemonade, wasting their time.
We did not leave Chamblin’s empty handed. Our Silas got his comics, Foos her books. Foos loves it in there. She runs from section to section, supposedly looking for the children’s books, even though she knows exactly where they are. I always get nervous when she strays from me in one of those claustrophobic isles. Filled with the irrational fear she will disappear into one of those true romance novels nobody admits to reading. Poof! Gone. But she is always there, around the bend, giggling and waiting.
Photos: Seth
