42 Dreams of Arizona Bay

I’ve been buying jeans from a certain store for many years. They are one of the only places that stocks jeans that are my size and long enough. Tall women do not come fat in many stores, apparently.

So I just know to go to this one store, Aisle Breanne, let’s call it. They have a good mixture of professional clothes and wearable cute clothes, as well as some dowdy clothes I wouldn’t put one arm in. But no elastic waistbands in the jeans. No, that’s reserved for the dowdy, high-waisted, high-water plus-size jeans at Style Insect.

At Aisle Breanne, even when their styles change, their jeans never fail me. I sometimes don’t bother to try them on, because I know that it’s what I bought last time.

Until I went into the store recently, armed with a coupon and a knowledge of a sale.

No more regular sizes on the jeans. Instead, they have them color coded in red, blue and yellow, with sizes 1 and up. Is this an attempt to get the fat girls into size one jeans? Thank you very much, but I like to leave the delusions to myself.

The color codes are according to fit, how your body is shaped.

I looked at the labels in disdain, but identified a color that I thought might work with the way my current jeans seem to fit.

Then a saleswoman not that interested in helping me comes by. Note that she was really interested in helping the last person, just not me.

“What’s the size equivalent for these jeans?” I ask. I am annoyed because they’ve messed with my jeans, the one thing sacred to me. I always wear jeans. I am always comfortable in them. Don’t mess with my jeans!

It’s like I dumped the contents of my kitty litter box on her floor.

“There is no direct size equivalent. You have to be measured.”

It’s as if she dumped her kitty litter box on my floor in retaliation. She said it in an air of snootiness, and she then said the measure word to me.

I hate trying on clothes. I have to be in the mood. That’s why having jeans that I know will fit me is convenient. And she wanted to measure me?

“It’ll take just a second,” she said, as she whipped out a tape measure while I clearly stood there in disgust. She told me to turn sideways, as she looked at my butt and the way my jeans fit me.

She then grabbed two sizes in the color coding I knew was wrong for my body shape, and in the wrong color of jeans. “I don’t like super dark jeans,” I said, and she wordlessly, disapprovingly handed me a lighter pair. It’s like I said I didn’t need the second fork at my place setting in a fancy restaurant.

Unlike the other person she’d just helped with jeans, she didn’t offer to take me to the dressing room. She didn’t offer to get me different pairs. No, she just left me to wander.

So I picked out a shirt out of clearance and then in retaliation for the snootiness, also picked up a couple of pairs of jeans in the clearance. I knew they would fit.

Tried on the jeans she had handed me, and at least I now know what size I should wear, even if they didn’t fit correctly. I also decided to buy a pair of the clearance jeans instead. They were way cheaper, they made me happy and also didn’t give that nasty woman the satisfaction of snootiness in claiming there was no direct size equivalent.

I handed the incorrectly folded jeans back to the saleswoman, who looked at them as if I’d just offered her a present from the litter box dumped on the floor. She put them down immediately.

“They didn’t fit me right,” I said.

“Well, there’s plenty of other sizes and styles,” she said. “Maybe next time.”

That’s not a saleswoman. That’s a full-on bitch.

Many times, when you check out, the clerk will ask who was helping you, and I was prepared to say that woman helped me, but deserved no credit for doing so. But they didn’t ask. Instead, they were more interested in selling their store credit card to me. Which I refused for the billionth time.

This store really does have plus size women where they want them. I can’t say I’ve ever had a saleswoman there be that rude to me, but I do remember the time when one was on a cell phone, loudly, the entire time I was there.

I’ve often been dissatisfied by Aisle Breanne’s prices and selections. I usually only go there when they’re having sales and I have a coupon, so I can afford to buy their clothes. The one thing that has always remained constant is their jeans. And now even that is not sacred.

Curse you! Curse you in claiming that I can’t just buy a pair of jeans off the rack! Curse you for messing with my jeans.