I'm a Shopping Illiterate

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There are two reasons why foreigners travel to Andorra: skiing or shopping. Now, I’m crap at skiing and I hate shopping. Nevertheless…

Andorra is a Country of Lilliputian size, only 40 kms from the south border (the one with Spain) to the Pas de the House one which separates the Country from France. The latter sits at over 2000 meters a.s.l. and, contrarily to what happens with the Spanish one, it represents a true physical barrier. The connections to and from Andorra are consequently good with Spain but nearly nonexistent with its overpyrenees neighbour. Starting from Carcassone with no private car would mean to be forced to travel to Toulouse first, 100 kms north-west, then hope to catch the sporadic bus service to cover further 200 kms south. Not very practical. Hence the idea to rent a modest little car for a couple of days over the Pyrenees. The price was accessible, the snow absent.

After a first, flat part along the highway, the road begins to go up, softly at first, then in steep hairpin bends that often end up forcing me down to second gear. I drive through the Midi French Pyrenees getting across towns progressively smaller and smaller till becoming no bigger than tiny characteristic mountain villages as the stripe of asphalt makes its way through the mountains. I reach the andorran border, I slow down but the French gendarme is already busy fighting the low air temperature and so waves me to go on. Apparently, because of duty free, only vehicles leaving Andorra get stopped and checked out. Across the border make my first stop at Andorra 2000, a first class ski resort characterized by “snow and sun” as it recites the slogan at the entrance. In reality, the day has become cloudy and, as for the snow, there are just a few centimetres on the half-deserted tracks. Such a winter must be a true disgrace for a tourism based on snow and ski.

I finally arrive to La Vella, the over congested capital of the country. If you ever decide to visit it, I recommend you not to make it by car: it’s like taking a ferry boat to cross a swimming pool. After one hours at snail pace, I finally abandon my green Skoda Felicia in a pay parking lot (more exactly it should have been called “racket parking lot”) and pay my customary visit to the local tourism office. And it is here that I discover these two reasons mentioned in the opening paragraph. Only, there is no snow… it remains the shopping. The kind employee at the tourism office does her best to praise the fascination of this internationally famous neighbourhood of andorran shopping “where famous stylists best ateliers can be found as well as the main international franchising stores”. Some sort of Piccadilly. But shopping and myself…

Let’s start from this axiom: I only buy clothes when I have nothing to wear. “Nothing to wear” could be interpreted like “nothing that matches with those black shoes”. No, in my case must be read literally. When my sole pair of jeans has more porthole that an ocean-going liner, when my only shoes have no more sole, when mi t-shirt is totally colourless and nearly transparent, that’s my time for shopping. And even then, we are talking about a completely negligible experience: choice of the hour when as few people as possible goes shopping, a single store that sells all I need, entry, picking up those two or three potentially useful items, a quick size testing and a no less fast purchase of the lot. The whole process takes just half an hour, nevertheless every time I know I have to, I do my best to indeterminately procrastinate the event. And it isn’t just a custom I picked up in my adult age. I believe I was one of the very few who, in adolescent age, not only never asked for new clothes but that indeed must had been periodically forced by his mother to buy some.
Gifts chapter. Dates back to that same adolescent period my moral code of gifts laws: 1) Regardless of who the receiver is, the gift must consist of a CD; 2) Regardless of what music the receiver likes, such CD must appeals to the undersigned in order to subsequently being able to borrow it and record it on tape (it was the pre-Internet, pre-CD burning era); 3) Remain excluded from points 1 and 2 deaf friends. With the progressive shifting of my interest from music to literature, such code became obsolete and was finally replaced by a new one: 1) Regardless of who the receiver is, the gift must consist of a book; 2) Regardless of what reading the receiver likes, such book must appeals to the undersigned in order to subsequently being able to borrow it and read it; 3) Remain excluded from points 1 and 2 blind and/or illiterate friends. And the system had worked for years. Until…

How to choose a present for a three months old child? My friends Soraya and Juan had recently became parents and I returned for first time on the island (Gran Canaria, where I used to live). Sticking to the aforesaid code -for first time since its institution- I found myself facing case 3. At three months of age the baby was definitely illiterate. The idea of showing up with an illustrated edition of “Robinson Crusoe” as gift for the new born was quite stimulating, “at the end of the day”, I reasoned, “he will not remain illiterate forever”. But soon I had to change my mind, imagining that the kid would have suck the angles of the book till its total ingestion before reaching an age in which he could have read it. Idea Discarded. Nothing could be done but paying a visit to the apparel store.

Same tactic as always: propitious hour and apparently well supplied store. This time, having no idea of what babies wear, I’m forced to ask for help to the store clerk. I’m received by a very good looking, blue eyed 20 years old girl.
“How can I help you?”
“I would like to buy a gift for a child.”
“How old is the child?”
“Three months old.”
“But… at three months is not a child.”
“That’s what I always tell him in the morning when he doesn’t want to get out of bed to go working in the coal mine.”.
The young store clerk smiles, then resumes: “What I meant to say is that at three months of age children are considered babies and we do not cater for babies, you should visit a store specialized in accessories for the baby”.
Never heard about. Such discovery puts at stake my previous believing that the only accessory a baby could need was the nappy.

Scene number two: store specialized in babies outfit. Other store clerk, slightly less young and less pretty than the first one.
“How can I help you?”
“I was looking for a gift for a three months old baby”
“Boy or girl?”
Here we are, now that I know we are talking about a baby, not a child, I ignore whether is a boy or a girl.
“Don’t you have anything neutral?”
“How do you mean, neutral?” the astonished clerk asks me.
“I mean, neither blue nor pink, something black for example. Fact is I don’t know whether the baby is male or female.”
The store clerk expression shifts from astonishment to worry: “Black?”
“Yes, why not? What if he was a hermaphrodite?” I feel I’m close to that point of no return beyond which I never succeed to keep myself serious and all get transformed into parody. I react in time. “Wait, I have an idea”. Phone call my friend Pilar and ask her about it. And so, after the canonical greeting exchange (a very short one, because, apart from being crap at skiing and hating shopping, I also feel a sanguine aversion against telephones): “See, I’m in a store for babies to buy a present for Juan’s offspring. Do you recall was that male or female?”
Pause: “Don’t tell me you don’t remember that!”
“It’s not that I don’t remember, I have plainly never known it”
Pause, little longer than the previous one: “You want to tell you don’t remember that evening he showed us Soraya’s ultrasound and you made an ass of yourself?”

Short note about “make an ass of oneself” in Marco’s life. Despite such expression could find truly corrispondence in a long list of episodes, the greatest part of them is closely related to parties and alcohol. In the specific case mentioned by Pilar, instead, I was in full control of my mental faculties and the episode pivots around the pic of an ultrasound, a joke and the discovery that the words “children” and “humour” never match in the parent’s world, regardless of how joke inclined these normally are.

“Yes, I do remember that evening, so?”
“Well, he showed us the ultrasound to tell us it was a girl”
“uh”
I part from Pilar and back I am to the clerk: “is a girl.”
From then on, she had all the infos she need and could consequentially sell me just about anything, probably some left over from year 1987. The choice (hers) was a pijama labelled as “6 months”. To my protests that the baby was just 3 months old, she answered “Yes, but babies grow fast, one need to buy thinking about the future”… and despite all… I went to Andorra…

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Comments

[Phileas_Fogg]

Funny blog
This was hilarious :-)