plain and simple: coming home means coming to goodwill. this is what I did this afternoon, when grant applications and transcribing nearly ended in tears. when you’re frustrated, go to goodwill. when you need clothes, go to goodwill. when you don’t need clothes, go to goodwill.

I couldn’t find a parking spot, which made me feel a little bit better about people, since apparently they were all inside shopping at goodwill, which is good. inside, everything seemed to be the same from my last visit: the store still smells like the inside’s of old women’s purses, a mixture of thin mints and medicine bottles and must. the children inside the store are still cuter than any children outside it; short sleeve shirts are still hung on the long sleeve shirt racks, the employee that looks like whoopi goldberg is still an employee and still looks like whoopi goldberg. the cranberries still play every ten minutes and the idea of of purchasing bagels from an aisle adjacent to the used-lamp aisle still creeps me out. this is comforting somehow; the idea that nothing ever changes at goodwill.

but shopping solo is a dangerous experience. everything, in my estimation, looks like a project. I have always been overambitious with the application of scissors and belts and I pretty much like everything Liv Tyler wore in Empire Records, which is a problem because I’m pretty sure Goodwill furnished her wardrobe, and also because nobody else likes what Liv Tyler wore in Empire Records, except maybe Liv Tyler. I need Lauren or Grace or Jessica with me at Goodwill, to gently remind me that if the fabric looks like upholstery from a Psychiatrist’s office, it is best passed over (basic rule of thumb: if a piece of fabric is in any way reminiscent of a Home School Digest cover between the years 1993-1998, don’t buy it).

waiting in line for a changing room, I saw one of the girls I was a counselor to at camp this summer. I couldn’t remember her name, but I smiled at her; arms piled high with unwearable ethnic prints. a light went on in her face and she tugged at her mom’s skirt and pointed at me and her mother smiled and nodded, clearly not getting what her daughter was trying to articulate: mom, my counselor shops at goodwill. I know I was her favorite counselor at camp; I don’t know if my consumer choices lowered or raised me in her estimation.

I wanted to go over and tell her: embrace it, honey. embrace second-hand clothes. embrace goodwill. really.