I don’t know why, but it seems I’ve run out of clothing stores.

It’s not that they are all closing down due to the economic times, although that could be an issue sooner than I think.

It’s just that almost all of the clothes out there are either too “young” or too “old.”

And I fall somewhere in between.

There is a time in everyone’s life when they need to look in the mirror and admit to themselves that a teenager will always look better in something than you do. I’m definitely at that point.

I have to say that I’m not a big fan of older women who dress like teenagers.  I think it makes them look ridiculous.  Perhaps they are feeling young at heart, but that doesn’t mean they need to wear low-rise jeans, midriff-baring tops, and hoodies.  I live in the land of women who do everything in their power to deny their ages, and at the mall I once saw what must have been a woman in her sixties wearing a very expensive, very trendy outfit that would have looked at home on a sixteen year old.  Sixty? I’m sorry, but no. It looked very, very, wrong.

But I’m in that awkward age range that certainly is long past young adult, and yet isn’t middle-aged, either.  Designers, it seems, go for either one or the other. And while there are things that I like, I certainly can’t afford them.  It’s that damn lack of money thing that keeps getting in my way.  Of course I have good basic foundation pieces, but sometimes I’m looking for something different, you know? 

So I find myself wandering aimlessly through clothing stores, seeing nothing that I feel fits my age or my attitude. 

Or maybe I’m just in denial myself.

Normally, a trip to the mall is pretty uneventful. The biggest news is a 30% off sale at the video store. But sometimes, especially if you live in LA, something magical happens at a mall, and it doesn’t even involve John Cusack and going back twenty years (sorry, I was regressing for a second there).

It involves only this: Improv Everywhere. And napkins. Lots of napkins.