Let's go shopping -- next year

JAKARTA (JP): One day when I was watching TV, my girlfriend told me she wanted to go shopping. My reaction to this was: "Hmm, look honey, Shaquille O'Neal missed another free throw." It was only after a while that I realized she would demand somebody accompany her, and that somebody would be me. So, I said: "Okay!" Then I pretended that I had collapsed for the entire day.

What is bothering me is that women have different shopping styles from men. When a man wants to buy a shirt, first he thinks about what kind of shirt he wants, then he decides to buy it later because Baywatch is on TV.

A woman has a different approach. The process of her dress- shopping routing is like this:

1. Drags her man to the shopping mall.

2. Finds a dress that she likes very much.

3. Goes through the entire shopping mall for five hours to find a better dress, which turns out to be exactly the same as the first dress.

4. Asks her man whether the dress makes her look fat, and gets mad at him before he gives an answer.

5. Buys a pair of earrings and forgets about the dress.

6. The man shoots himself in the head.

That is why I feel hesitate to go shopping with my girlfriend, especially during this month when children are urging their parents to take them to a shopping mall to buy new year gifts for the people that they love the most, i.e. themselves.

Those children are unaware that they are giving their parents the biggest challenge humanity ever faced: finding an empty parking space. They have to circle around the parking lot, and try to find a shopper who has just left the mall to see out his or her car, and make the person leave the empty space for them. Sometimes other parents try to steal the shopper, which can cause them to fight with each other, while the children show their support by staying in the car singing doo-wah-diddy-diddy-dum- diddy-do. But that's the tradition they go through every year, because they are holiday shoppers.

After parents successfully park their cars -- usually in some place near Brazil -- they go to the toy section, where their children can happily select their gifts and destroy them before sundown, sometimes by eating them. The parents then have to pay for a G.I. Joe toy, minus the leg that is still stuck in little Bobby's mouth, while trying to scientifically explain to him why he shouldn't eat a toy's body part, which is because it can attract Mr. Headless Kidnapper at night. They all have to do that, because, again, they are holiday shoppers.

Although these people make shopping malls extremely crowded and unpleasant around this time of year, I am sure there are men who are still happy to take their girlfriend there, but all of them are now living in Karzchyzetgwkistan, where no shopping mall has ever been built. Most of the men that live here however, are more interested about how eels have sex than about how their girlfriends buy their dresses.

I remember the first time my girlfriend asked me to go to a shopping mall, she had the excitement of a cheerleader, but without the pom-pom. She rushed to every store and completely forgot that I was there with her. When she finally found a dress that she liked, I was still 300 meters behind, with a group of men who were also looking for their girlfriends.

Then my girlfriend went to a fitting room. While she was trying on the dress and making some cakes, or whatever that she did in there that took 30 minutes to complete, I had to wait by myself in the ladies department, looking like a sex offender searching for bras. I hate it when a group of girls walk by and see me hanging around for fun in the underwear section, then giggle to each other, mouthing words that I hope were "He's a pervert". So, to avoid that situation, I tried to stare impatiently at the fitting room, to indicate that I was an innocent guy who was waiting for someone in there, or an innocent guy who was trying to hold in his pee.

She then walked out from the fitting room, with an angry look on her face, and shouted to me: "Too small!" The problem was that it although it makes women feel bigger than Luciano Pavarotti, it has never stopped my girlfriend from trying first the smallest size available, including dresses designed for Barbie dolls.

While she was doing all of that, her man could only stand beside her, looking at her with an expression of enraptured interest, while his mind was actually thinking about more important matters, such as whether Britney Spears has ever had breast implant surgery.

Thirteen bigger sizes later, my girlfriend finally bought the dress. But that's not all, she had to go shopping again to find accessories that matched the dress. And me? I was still hoping to find my precious gift: an empty parking space.

-- E. Effendi