Back when I made a visit to my parents this summer, my mother said that she had some points accumulated on her L.L. Bean credit card and that she thought this color of polo shirt in the catalog would look good on me.
And, I said that I was fine with polo shirts and didn't need any more right now, really, and plus the color that she said she was looking at had too much yellow for my skintone and it would make me look funny.
Fast-forward several weeks after I get back, and what comes in the mail but a package from L.L. Bean, with the color of polo shirt that she was looking at, and one that was a slightly darker color.
Of course I thanked her over the phone, and I took the tags off of the slightly darker one and ironed it, but when I put it on, their large was much too large for me.
(I go between a large and a medium; sometimes larges are too large, but at other times mediums don’t fit my chest right.)
So, I ended up taking the shirts to the local church-run resale shop, to let it be someone else’s good fortune to get brand new L.L. Bean polo shirts.
I mean, what am I supposed to do, spend time figuring out return policies and then running up to the post office so I can completely return one shirt and get another back in a different size, when it’s not even my account and you’d have to spend time with logistics and ways to get refund money as the non-account holder etc.?
Just a lot of hassle, like probably somewhere around an hour of time in total, and that's a lot of time for something that I don’t even need.
First off, I just don’t get the appeal of shopping by mail. Like, you can't try things on for fit, so WTF?
Second, my mother is turning into the things that she didn’t like about her mom – a little bit worrywart and pushy, and necessitating lies from the child (“Yes, I love the shirts”).
Life is funny that way, including how I'm becoming the "her" role in the relationship with her mom (just accepting the pushiness and lying, to make the pushiness go away).
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