by Cathy
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| The drawing room at Woman's Athletic Club |
Where will this milestone event take place, you ask? A friend's house? A restaurant? A banquet hall? A school gym? Why, no. It'll be at a club! No, no, rest assured. This isn't da cluuub. It's a Club. The Woman's Athletic Club of Chicago, that is.
Oh, you're not familiar with WAC? Well, I hadn't been either until I checked the place out online to make sure she won't be mingling amongst dangling free weights and swimming pools. Turns out, there's none of that at this athletic club.
Once she heard about the shi-shi invite, she went straight to her closet, dug through the wall of clothes and yanked out the exact party dress she wanted to wear: a cream and black dress with vertical ruffles down the front and a black silk and tulle skirt that hit her perfectly at the knee. She just needed some tights and a pair of nice dress shoes to compete her ensemble. The tights were no problem - I could pick up a pair at Target on my way home from work and call it a day. The shoes, on the other hand, were a more delicate issue. She needed to be with me, lest I buy her a pair that was too pointy, too rounded, too girly, too babyish, too big, too small, too rhinestoney, too sparkly, or with too many bows (i.e. one).
Considering activities, homework and sports, the timing for shopping had to magically work into our schedule. Besides, we wanted to go without her little sister since that could cause distractions of grand proportions. So I took advantage of a teeny, tiny window of time when Ari would be at swimming and Bella would be fresh out of basketball practice. I had precisely 45 minutes to work with so I packed a sandwich for her - because shopping with a tween girl is hard enough, let alone a tired, hungry tween girl - and off I went.
But where would I go?
I phoned my mother-in-law earlier that day, asking her if she had returned that pair of too-big shoes she had gotten Bella for Christmas, and if not, then I could possibly exchange them for something Bella finds and likes herself. But alas, they'd been returned.
"I know it's hard!" said my MIL on the phone. "I tried to buy her another pair but they didn't have anything nice. But you know what?" she continued, realizing my time crunch and desperate to help. "You can go to Payless! They have BOGO!" she said excitedly, her Hispanic accent making it sound even more appealing.
BOGO is always good when you have two sprouting girls to buy shoes for. Who can't always take advantage of that? But I would make that my second option. My first would be my go-to store for everything I need in a pinch: Marshall's. It was close to my house and had a good selection of nice designery stuff - except, of course, for the night we went. Repeatedly, Bella tried like Cinderella's step-sisters to make multiple pairs of shoes fit, but to no avail.
Disappointed and running super low on time, we walked out into the brisk night air. I scanned the mall desperately for a girls' shoe store to magically appear and there I saw it, beckoning us from across the parking lot: Payless.
'BOGO!' I heard my MIL's voice echoing in my head.
"BOGO it is!" I said aloud, grabbing Bella's hand and hightailing it over.
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| Payless for a WAC function? But, of course. |
The smell of lovely plastic, man-made shoe materials overwhelmed us upon entry. We made our way to the girls aisle, where within minutes of browsing Bella spotted THE pair.
"Oooh, these are cute!" she said. And then I was surprised to hear her say: "Really? These are $25? At Payless?"
I chuckled to myself, recalling something my sister overheard once while walking past the Payless store at the Old Orchard mall. Two ladies, BOGO bags in tow, were walking out of the store, and one turns to the other and blurts out what she had been seemingly wanting to say the entire time they were in the store.
"Can you believe these were $50?" her voice went up high, before it came down to a low, deliberate tone and finished with, "At Pay. Less." Her voice trailed off, "I coulda gotten something similar at Macy's for $35!"
That BOGO deal must've been too good to pass up.
Like these ladies, Patti and I have found ourselves browsing through a Payless - either for our kids or when we're looking for some everyday, kickaround little numbers or styles based on a shoe trend we don't want to spend zillions of dollars on. We too had found ourselves musing at how expensive the shoes are.
"I don't know about these boots," I once shared with Patti. "They're cute but they're $55. At Payless. Are they worth it for what I am getting?"
"That's a lot for Payless, girl!" Patti quipped back, trying on some platform heels.
"But they're made by that Project Runway guy, you know, that designer?" I questioned back, justifying the price with the above-par quality I would get in comparison to 'regular' Payless shoes.
"Yeah, but it's up to you on if you want to spend that money here on that designer or go somewhere else and get something even better. Payless ain't cheap no more, girl!"
I didn't buy those boots that day, but standing in that Payless with Bella as she was falling in love with the black sequined flats decorated with a beautiful silky, frilly bow (I must say, they were way cuter than what we saw at Marshall's) and I falling in love with her even more for always being my budget-minded, sensitive one, I told her she shouldn't worry about where the shoes are from or what they cost. "If you love them, we're getting them," I said.
I gave the shoes a last once-over and wondered if that picture of Selena Gomez (star of Disney's Wizarads of Waverly Place!) plastered to the insoles had something to do with the higher price point for these Payless shoes. "Ah. They're a Payless designer shoe," I smiled to myself.
Happy with her choice, Bella helped me choose a pair of ballet shoes for Ari, who is now wearing Bella's old hand-me-downs and is spilling out of them. Bonus! BOGO!
We paid almost $40 for both pairs.
At Pay. Less.
Bella and I now refer to it as Paymore. The entire time in the store, we repeated our new tagline aloud in a TV announcer's voice: "Pay more at Payless!" we kept saying with a huge, fake smile.
But hey, we can't complain. At least we got BOGO.
