Yesterday I went shopping for school clothes with my fourteen-year-old daughter.

Each time I do this, I feel more than a year older than I did the year before.   I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that I’d look at some of the clothes and think, “That’s cute … I wonder if it comes in my size?”  Not anymore.

This year was, well, really depressing.  The styles, it seems to me, are for the very young or the very old.  I went through racks and racks of stuff I wouldn’t be caught dead in.

I tried on a pair of jeans and it turns out they were made of some sort of spandex material that I had to wriggle into.  My daughter says “everybody” wears jeans like that.

My daughter says its “uncool” to tuck in blouses, which was good since the one I tried on was way too short to tuck in.  I was so confused because it was cut like ones you’re supposed to tuck in, but you’re not supposed to tuck it in.  I don’t know how people who don’t have teenagers ever figure it out.  Oh, and it, too, was skintight even though it was my size. 

I looked in the mirror and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  It was a sight to behold.  I looked again and burst out laughing. 

My daughter, in the dressing room across from mine, yelled out, “What?!”

“This is so bad.  You won’t believe how bad it is,” I answered.

She hollered for me to come show her.   I peeked out my door to make sure no one would see, then I ran across to her room.

“Wow, Mom.  You look GOOD,” she exclaimed.  What she really meant was that she thinks I usually look bad, seeing as how I try to wear jeans that don’t show my panty lines, much less the bulges around them.  And mine are not bell bottoms. (They’re called “flares” now, but they’re really just bell bottoms.)  And I usually tuck my shirt in. 

I passed up the racks of “capris”, which is a fancy word for pedal pushers.  I’m five feet tall, and if I want to make myself look shorter and fatter, well, all I have to do is wear capris.  No thanks.

I passed up the racks and racks of tops that were either semi-transparent or had thin little things for straps.  Some had leopard prints.  I kept walking.

I wound up in the next department.  The casual blouses now all had little flowers embroidered on the collars and around the buttonholes.  I’m not a flower-on-my-shirt kind of person.  The pants I tried on came up to my armpits and had an elastic waist in the back.  You get the picture, I’m sure.

I’ve decided to just hibernate for a couple of years until all this stuff has gone out of style and we have good clothes to pick from again.

Please wake me up when they get here.