Back to School Shopping

I went back to school shopping for the kids today. Not for me. Guess I will have to continue going to school naked being I didn't get any back to school clothes yet... Ethan and Noah both received gift cards to JCPenny's from my dad and his wife for their birthdays. Dad doesn't believe in giving kids toys for presents, and his wife is a clothes-aholic, thus the kids end up with JCPenny's cards. They used to get Herberger's cards that I would buy from them so they'd have the cash and I'd use the card, but I can't really even find the department where my clothes would be at JCPenny's. They cater to size 0 juniors, women size 20 plus, and old ladies. Therefore, I took the kids to Penny's to pick out "any clothes you want". With Ethan I quickly regretted saying that. Ethan has always liked gaudy. The gaudier the better. He found lots of flashy shirts with metallic dragons and crossbones on them that I nixed right away. I even found myself getting desperate enough to encourage him to buy a shirt that said, "Homework? Are you Kidding ME? Talk to the hand". I noticed that 75% of JCPenny's boys clothing is gangster wear. I asked Noah, "do kids at your school wear these clothes?" He said, "ya, the ones who don't listen and get in a lot of trouble." Enough said. The kids at my school who wear clothes like that think they are in a gang. I even asked an employee at Penny's "where are the non-gangster clothes". He looked at me like I was from outer space and I almost expected him to point me to the old lady department, but he said, "there's some Nike stuff over there..." Two little islands of non-gangster and NONE of it in Ethan's size. WTF??? Noah ended up with 147.00 worth of clothes. I gave into Ethan's wish for a "flashy" shirt and let him buy a webkinz. Then we went to the shoe department and were practically greeted with shoes saying a "yo yo man. Whazup?" Needless to say we left that store to go to a different one for shoes. Tennis shoes are so expensive. Again, Ethan picks out the ugly tacky ones that are on clearance (because no one wants them) that were thankfully not in his size. Noah picks out the most expensive pair and if I were in a better mood I would have toyed with the idea, but I laughed and said, "Are you kidding? When are you going to get a job?" I gave him three choices. One pair, I'd love to pay for, the second I wouldn't mind paying for but they were identical to his current pair and, one that I could live with paying. Of course he chose the most expensive one. The thing that really sucks is, that one he wanted was a black and orange Nike, but it didn't come in his size, so the salesperson brought out the white and black version- which was 12.00 more than the orange and black. Those are the ones we got, but I have to admit, they do look nice. Ethan ended up with a cheaper version of the obnoxious ones and they look like trash, but he loves them. Oh well, I don't have to wear them and they were less than 40.00. I now understand why my dad would get crazy crabby during back to school shopping time, and I would have been the kid to pick the cheaper of the three choices given to me. You know, now that I think of it, they didn't have to look for reasonably priced "non-gang" clothes because there weren't gangs then. I also was pretty easy because I knew they'd only spend so much and I would gladly go to 15 stores to find Levis on clearance. They had it pretty easy. They could have had to fight the "I want to dress like a hooker" or "I don't care if I have one pair of pants for the whole year- they are going to be Guess Jeans (size 29)!" Huh...