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Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Oh Boy!
Confronting Motherhood, Womanhood and Selfhood in a Household of Boys
By Karin Kasdin
Few people are architecturally conscious enough to notice that the restrooms in the department stores are typically located near the china. Mothers of sons notice. I find this architectural plan ironic, seeing as women who are shopping for china are probably the most likely of anyone in the store to be able to control their bladders. A woman with a cultivated taste for Royal Doulton would be too repulsed by public bathrooms to use them or anything other than a quick lipstick freshening. It would make far more sense to position the restrooms near the boy's department in consideration of customers who actually use the facility. By the time we winded our way back to the boy's department, any half-hearted attempt at motivation they might have made before trekking upstairs and back down again was now too much for them to pull off. They would grab a couple of blue shirts and a couple of pairs of black pants and beg to be set free from the consumer bondage. I never knew what I was buying until I arrived home and surveyed the black and blue clumps of fabric they had thrown onto their beds.
Now I shop for the boys while they're at school or at football games. I've learned that some things, despite good intentions and profound love, are impossible to do. I don't understand their inability to browse, but I accept it. I set aside four days per year to outfit my sons. I purchase three times more than they need, prepared to return to the mall the next day with the rejected items. At home they can gag and refuse to try things on and whine and hide without humiliating me. And when they resort to these tactics, I can send them to their rooms. And while they're in their rooms, they have nothing better to do so they might as well try on clothes.
