Abercrombie zombies

“I need a favor, Hed,” says Susie, my good friend and college roommate from Michigan. “Would you go into Abercrombie and Fitch with me?”

It’s Monday and we’re shop-shop-shopping on the final full day of what’s become one of my all-time favorite traditions: Susie’s Annual Summer Visit.

“Have you been in there before?” I ask with a hint of trepidation.

“Yes, that’s why I need you to go with me,” she says.
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Susie’s kids, God bless ‘em, remain blissfully unaware of the High Pressure Fashion Juggernaut that could soon have them begging to buy worn and torn crap clothing that costs a small fortune.

Suze doesn’t necessarily want to encourage this passion for crap fashion, but knows she can get the worn and torn stuff for cheap in July, when apparently everything goes on sale.

She knows these things. That’s why she’s a smart shopper.

We’re halfway across the parking lot and the sun is shining and I’m having Friday afternoon college happy hour flashbacks due to the thump thump thump of the club music and the veritable wall of men’s cologne pushing its way towards us.

We half expect to be carded on the way in. We’re silly that way.

Any trace of feeling barely legal vanishes as soon as we step into the Land of the Abercrombie Zombies.

POOF! We are instantly old and unfashionable.

An impossibly small, ragamuffin of a girl approaches and mumbles something.

“HEH?” shouts Susie, over the music that is shaking the shaggy shirts from the hangers.

“ARE YOU FINDING EVERYTHING OKAY?” small person shouts back.

“DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING ON SALE?” yells Susie.

“FOLLOW ME.”
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We’ve been in the store less than two minutes and I’m overcome with a violent, nose-runny/head-throbby allergic reaction to this foreign environment.

I resist the urge to wipe my nose on one of the tissue-thin t-shirts stacked on the table next to me even though it seems oh so appropriate.

My misery is exacerbated by the piteous, what-are-you-doing-here looks from this team of tiny identical teenagers.

Suddenly I see a beer-bellied middle-agester trailing after a small girl who is obviously his daughter.

We exchange "I feel your pain" glances before his little zombie wanna-be drags him over to a rack of sweatpants so small they're for Barbies or Bratz or whatever unrealistically imaged doll they're marketing to young girls these days.
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Ragamuffin? Yes, ragamuffin. It's what my Mom called my brother and me when we were dirty/messy after building forts and climbing trees and riding bikes all day.

It just popped into my head in the store and kinda freaked me out.

“WAITASECOND,” thinks me. “What if this place REALLY turned me into an old person?"

I move closer to the exit and and breathe deeply, fighting the urge to run out the door screaming "RAGAMUFFIN! DAVENPORT! POCKETBOOK!"
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All the while we're there, I'm wondering how the hell they get all this stuff to look so old and threadbare.

Here’s my theory.

The thinky and generous brains at Abercrombie and Fitch ship their fresh, new duds over to Africa to be worn by poor, orphaned children for a few years. Once the garments are sufficiently worn out, A&F replaces them with a fresh batch of clothes while the worn ones are shipped back to the United States to be purchased by silly Americans willing to pay top dollar for stuff that orphans won’t wear anymore.

Maybe.
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The thing is, my favorite sweatshirt is frayed around the collar. The cuffs are torn and sometimes when I put it on, my wrist goes through the hole rather than the sleeve.

I’ve had it for 15 years.

And the whole point to having something worn and torn is to have lived in it and loved it for a very long time, not to only appear to have a lotta great memories when all you have is more money than brains.
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I am listening to: Hootie & The Blowfish – Only Wanna Be With You
I am reading: Crashing Through by Robert Kurson
And I am: Old