time for you, time for me

Today I bought a tank top for too much money that was on sale from WAY too much money and I bought it just so I could get it totally drenched in sweat. This is because I am going to the gym more often and therefore I need more gym clothing because I either have the option to be smelly or buy more clothes. There is a third option which is do laundry more often, which you and I both know is not an option at all. 

It was at the Lululemon store at Union Square. The girl behind the counter was way more nervous than you’d expect someone who works at Lululemon to be. I tried to smile at her just so she would stop twitching. It didn’t work.

“I love this color,” she said as she folded the light teal tank top. She placed it down for a moment and motioned to her own shirt which was in the same color. “It’s called Tinkerbell. I used to call it Toothpaste. Because it looks like toothpaste. Kinda. Ha ha!”

“It’s a very nice color,” I said, although I had primarily picked this particular tank top because it was in my size and on sale. 

And then she bagged up my stuff and I was on my way. She put my top in a reusable bag, the kind of bag that you pay $2 for at Trader Joe’s and bring back every time because you’re ostensibly helping the environment but you really just want to get every last cent out of that hard-earned cash that you plunked down on a reusable bag. The bag that she gave me was tiny, like maybe it could hold a packed lunch if I ever got it together to actually bring my lunch to work. Lululemon is now part of the conspiracy for me to pretend like I am a real adult who does real adult things like pack lunches.

The furthest I’ve ever gotten on the pack lunch express train is to throw a yogurt in my bag for breakfast, get distracted hungry at my coffee shop and order a bagel for breakfast and then get to work, remember my yogurt, and realize that I will be having a Sad Yogurt Lunch at my desk. (Sad Yogurt Lunch is the saddest of lunches.) Now that I bought this overpriced workout tank top on sale, I feel like now I have to become one of those people that I see flitting around the city constantly in their yoga outfits with their yoga mats and their sustainable water bottles and packed lunches like real life adult people who do real live adult things.

And anyway I looked up the tank top on the internet and the website says the color of my new tank top is named Toothpaste, not Tinkerbell.

Everything is a lie.