2012-02-24 13:55:51-05
It’s not often that I find myself standing in the middle of a room full of women’s lingerie, so when I wandered into a Victoria’s Secret store during my quick stay in New York City last week, I wasn’t at my most comfortable. I tried my best to walk around as if I knew what I was doing, as if I’d been inside that store dozens of times before, but I think my inexperience instantly became obvious the moment I bumped right into a scantily-clad mannequin and accidentally knocked off the Christmas hat that ‘she’ was wearing on her head. The issue was that, ordinarily, a visit to a women’s undergarment shop, let alone one that offers such an impressively large variety of racy items, is not a part of my normal routine whenever I am back in the US. It’s much more common for me to make stops at electronics stores and bookshops. However, even though I am more likely to purchase a portable hard drive than a sexy thong, it is important to note that whatever shopping I do partake in during my trips home, I am almost never shopping for myself. What happens is that every single time I am about to fly back to the States, I suddenly begin receiving ‘requests’. At first, these requests come from friends, friends from whatever destination I will be visiting after my stay in the US is over. For example, when I left Bucharest at the beginning of February for a two-week trip to Florida and New York, I knew that I would be flying back to Bucharest by the end of the month. So, one of my good Romanian friends asked if I could pick up a Kurt Vonnegut book for her that she had not been able to find in Romania. Sure thing. That’s an easy one. But somehow, every time, the word quickly spreads and before I know it, I’m receiving requests from friends of friends, cousins of friends, friends of cousins of friends and people whom I never even knew existed before they decided to ask if I could bring them back an iPod and a special kind of chopping board (only if they have it in purple!). And so it goes…no matter where I’ve traveled over the years, the requests have always poured in from near and far and I’ve always ended up spending a day or two wandering the streets, usually of New York City, shopping for… laptops, cameras, t-shirts, shoes, belts, socks, jackets, hats, luggage, toys, bed linen, candles, oreo cookies, dvd players, passport holders, pyjamas, memory cards, magazines, travel towels, inflatable swimming pools, beer mugs, baked beans, tripods, board games, dolls and body lotion from Bath & Body Works. I can understand. Many items are simply not available in other parts of the world and not only that, if they are available, they are often much more expensive than they are in the US. This is why, over the years, I’ve been more than happy to do some shopping during my trips home and bring back whatever has been requested by my friends, and some strangers, overseas. And that’s exactly how I ended up in Victoria’s Secret just three days ago… A friend of a friend of a friend in Romania, who had heard that I was going to New York City, kindly asked if I could buy her a pair of red Victoria’s Secret boots. ‘Why not?’, I thought. I’m always up for a new adventure and so, while in the Big Apple, through the doors of this famous lingerie retailer I went. However, after two minutes of not being able to locate the boot section, I quickly found myself feeling a little flustered and quite trapped within this intense maze of lace panties and bright pink âVery Sexyâ push-up bras. Everywhere I looked I saw more panties, but no boots. At one point, not sure where to go, I quickly turned a corner and that’s when I bumped into the mannequin, knocking off her hat and having to quickly grab her bare thighs in order to ensure that she didn’t fall over as well. Naturally, this created quite a commotion and everyone in the store immediately looked over at me. Then, a saleswoman approached, I asked her where I could find the boots, she told me that the boots were only available on their website and I turned around and bolted out of there. This was not my most successful of shopping missions at all. And it even made me question whether or not I want to continue with this part-time career as a personal shopper. Do I deserve to go through such embarrassment when all I’m trying to do is help a nice girl in Romania be able to wear a pair of sexy, fiery red, high-heel canvas boots? Well, it should come as no surprise that, later that afternoon, when I received an email from another friend of a friend in Romania, asking if I could bring him back some kind of special white samurai sword that costs $150 USD less in the US than in Europe, I responded to his request in a way that I had never done before. I said, ‘no’.
Do you receive similar shopping requests when you’re about to visit your home country? Or have you ever been the one doing the requesting? |