Today when I went shopping, I did not dress as I normally do. Or rather, I didn’t dress as I normally do when going grocery shopping. I did dress as I normally do around the house. In other words, I wore my faded blue jeans, my spaghetti-strapped white wife-beater tee, my hair up in those silly, silly knob-like doggy-ears, and my baby blue, semi-transparent, plastic gardening clogs … with my cool cat-eye sunglasses, of course. Normally, I would put on nice jeans, tennis shoes, a modest tee or blouse, and wear my librarian glasses. I don’t think I intentionally set out to see if I could attract attention from other human beings, but by the time I got to the grocery store, I noticed I was attracting attention. So I went ahead and sneakily paid attention to the people giving me attention from behind my dark sunglasses, and I enjoyed said attention.

Men noticed me more. Younger men than usual. Unlike when I go shopping dressed as a regular old housewife in her forties, no one followed me around the store, and not a one of them came up to me asking some ridiculous question as an excuse to strike up a conversation. I approve of this outcome. Nothing is more annoying than standing in front of the ice cream cooler and having some guy ask me where the Bluebell is when it’s quite obviously right in front of their nose.

Women noticed me more. I’d expected their reaction to include some sneers and smirks, because women are catty that way about appearances. Interestingly, even the women smiled or looked at me pleasantly. They also tended to defer to me whenever basket right-of-way was in question, which NEVER happens when I am in normal housewife attire.

Children noticed me. In fact, I was seemingly a child magnet. Small children would start following me as I passed. They all seemed to want to touch me. It was so annoying. One small tot ran all the way down the aisle from where her mother was and clamped onto my leg. Eek.

The people I had to interact with, the store staff and such, were all far more polite than usual, and not a one of them called me Ma’am or Miss or Honey or any other such thing. They all were just pleasantly neutral and helpful. None of them tried to strike up tedious chatty conversations after answering my question about where they moved the black olives. I know some of the people’s life stories, which I never asked to hear, and I don’t even know their names. Sometimes, too much information really is too much information. Just tell me where the olives are.

All in all, it was just weird the way people reacted entirely differently to me than they usually do. Not that anyone at the grocery store, staff or otherwise, has ever been awful to me in any way, but the amount of attention I received was extraordinarily high and all of it overwhelmingly pleasant … like they were all trying to figure out if I was someone they should pay attention to and impress or something. Yup, very odd.

I think I will start dressing this way more often in public. The attention was a nice ego boost. Everyone needs a good ego boost now and then.

Funny thing is that’s how I dress to go to the farmer’s market on Saturdays, because it’s outside, and it tends to be hot as hell and generally miserable. No one pays any attention to me there, but maybe that has something to do with Lin being there too, or maybe I just don’t notice because I am too busy rushing around trying to gather things together as quickly as possible so we can get out of the heat and have breakfast. Maybe I’ll have to pay attention tomorrow and see if anyone pays as much attention to me there. I’m betting not. There are lots of 40-something ladies there that are skinny little things like me and wearing outfits just like mine. I sort of blend in with the crowd.

At the HEB? Not so much.

Speaking of the farmer’s market. I better get to bed. Morning is coming all too early tomorrow, and we can’t miss the market. I am out of everything but ground spiced pork, and even that won’t last a whole week. So no lazy sleeping in, no matter how nice that would be.