Shopping with Chantal - March 8, 2005
On
the day of the March Masquerade meeting I made arrangements to get together
with Chantal for another afternoon shopping trip. It was such a nice day
out and of course a great day to be wearing a mini skirt! (Although I do
wear them at -40 C too!) So it was my black leather mini and a red top!
I met up with Chantal near the meeting place and headed off from there
to the St. Vital Centre, where I had been out shopping with my daughter
a few weeks earlier! Chantal was wearing a black top with a nice pair of
jeans and boots.
Our first stop was to the Sears store where we spent about half an hour browsing through the clearance section. Of course I was trying to remember I wanted "Tops" to go with the many skirts I have yet still found myself drawn to the skirts :-) I did resist the temptation though and kept an eye out for a nice top. I found a really nice turtleneck and felt the beige would go nice with either a black or a white skirt. Then spotted the same color with a low cut neckline and then the same thing in red! Torn between which color to get, I grabbed them both of course!! Chantal found a few nice tops and off we went to the customer service counter to pay for our treasures! Waiting in line and chatting with the sales clerk was a pleasant experience.
Then it was off through the mall with our shopping bags in hand in search of a skirt to go with Chantal's new tops. We did check through Garage Clothing and didn't find anything she was looking for. Our next stop was in Aldo Shoes where Paula had purchased a really nice pair of boots. Unfortunately the staff told us the only store that carries size 11 is the Polo Park Shopping Centre store. Should we be disappointed? No, just had another excuse for a shopping trip!
After checking a few of the other shoe stores we browsed through the clearance section in The Bay then stopped on our way out to take some pictures by the store sign! While we were taking the pics a nice lady stopped and asked if we would like her to take a picture of the two of us together. That was so nice of her and it really goes to show how the real public accepts us when we go out into the real world.
We
stopped at Safeway to pick up cookies for the Masquerade meeting and walked
through the store looking for the cookie isle. Picking out what
we felt were popular with the girls we headed to the checkout to pay for
our purchase and get this. There I am standing there with long auburn hair,
a mini skirt, high heeled boots, full makeup and after giving the clerk
my phone number for their Safeway Club membership card, the clerk has the
nerve to say "Have a good day MR............!!!"
What nerve. She has no idea about me or about who I am and even though I am presenting as a female this clerk showed no common sense when addressing a customer who indirectly is paying her wages! I've been to many Safeway stores in the last 4 years and have always been treated very well and several times. Yet this clerk was something else. Funny though. She was presenting as a male...with short cropped hair, no makeup, pants, shirt and flat shoes. How would she have felt if I had called her MR???
I can easily walk away from that laughing about it. Which is basically what I did as we walked through the store and out to the parking lot. In the past 4 years that I've been getting out into the real world as Sabrina, meeting and talking to so many people and passing thousands in my travels with very few incidents like this, I have come to know the wonderful feeling it is to be accepted as I am when I am out dressed as I want to be. So much so that when something like this happens I can easily shrug it of thinking "What a NUT" when I comes to people who feel the only way they can exist on the planet is to behave in the manor that Safeway clerk did.
With our shopping trip now over with, and our cookies in hand, we headed off to pick up Shandi for the Masquerade meeting and looked forward to an evening out and time on the dance floor!
Thanks for reading my story,
Sabrina
E-mail me at sabrina_markes@masquerade.ca
Member of the Winnipeg support group - "Masquerade"