My morning consists of waking up way too early on a Friday and getting to work at the perfect place to be at 7:30am: a coffee shop. That's right, I'm a barista. Which isn't as impressive today as it was ten years ago. Granted anyone can be trained to make coffee, so it's not like I went to school for it, but it's still better than flipping burgers. Today was rather busy, which is good, but kind of surreal at the same time. My two met together. After my coffee shift I work as a caregiver to my cousin, who is mentally disabled. Right as I got to work this morning, my cousin and her teacher walked in. My demeanor is much different around her than it is in regular life. I have to be very careful about what I say and how I say it without making her feel like she's a toddler. So needless to say, my 'barista' mode didn't ring true to her idea of what I'm like and her feelings kind of got hurt when I couldn't drop everything and bring her back to help me make her drink.
Of course, by the time I got off and got to her house she had forgotten the incident entirely and was her usual bubbly self. Or so I thought.
So, another story. Last week was mother's day. And last Friday my cousin really wanted to go shopping for a mother's day present. Well, after he homework and chores that we do every friday afternoon, it was dinner time and not enough time to go shopping. Not going to lie, I didn't really feel up to an afternoon of making sure she didn't have a mental break down in some mall shop. But I did let her know that next week, which is today, if we got her homework done early we could go. That thrilled her.
Well, we got her homework done early, she made sure that her chores were done before I even got there so we went to the mall. Somehow, in the course of everything, she got into her head that if she didn't buy her mother jewelry, it wouldn't be a gift. Right there should have been a red flag for me. Basically, the last few weeks, she has been going through her own massive collection of jewelry and getting rid of the 'kid' stuff, as she calls it. She's turning seventeen in July but mentally she's only about six, so her idea of pretty jewelry is the fake, plastic stuff you get at Chuck E. Cheese's. Her mom had been helping her sort through everything as have I. We got finished about two weeks ago and her jewelry collection was much smaller than what she was used to.
Fast forward to the mall. She can't decide what stores she wants to go into and keep getting drawn to places like Claire's or Forever 21, you know, the places pre-teens love. I am constantly reminding her that those stores were fine if we were shopping for something she wanted, being barely a teen herself, but not a good choice for a mother's day present. She still is convinced to get jewelry for her mother though. I should've caught on then. But I was giving her the benefit of the doubt, thinking she just truly wanted to get her mom something really pretty and meaningful. We had a budget of about thirty dollars which meant all the Zale's and Mall Jewelry stores were out completely.
After about two hours of trolling the mall, I'm getting tired of being there and trying with all my might to convince her that jewelry probably wasn't going to happen this year. Still, she persisted. And still I remained blind.
We finally stopped at a little jewelry kiosk that sells decent-ish jewelry at decent prices. Think the Walmart Jewelry department. I was anxious to get out of there so we sat examining every strand of silver and every pendant of gold. Another red flag should have alerted me was the fact that she was being drawn to the belly-button rings that you see the thirteen year old prancing around in. I let it slide and we found a nice sterling silver pendant with a 18k plated gold spiral in the middle. It was marked at $24.99 AND 50% off. It was the best thing for her to get and her mom loves spirals. Perfect.
Or so I thought.
She seemed pretty excited to get it. Yet was uncharacteristically silent on the ride home about the necklace and didn't really like my idea of surprising her mom with the necklace on her dinner plate. Once we got back to her house, I asked to look at the box and she proceeded to think she had lost it. I now know it was because she didn't want to accidentally leave it out in the open in case her mom found it.
So, I left the issue alone and we started to get her ready for dinner. My aunt, her mother, got home shortly afterwards and I expected my cousin to tell her mom about our shopping adventure and proudly present her the necklace. Since she was tired and hungry, I assumed she had already forgotten all about the afternoon so I gently reminded her about it, upon my utterance of the present, she shot me the most terrifying gaze she could muster and didn't say a word. Her mother went into the other room and she marched over to me and said "You didn't have to tell her about it," I was puzzled and hurt and shocked, "We told her we were mother's day shopping, I'm sorry if you wanted to surprise her with it." I replied. Another evil glare and she said "Yeah, and I'm going to have a nice afternoon once you leave." She then proceeded to go to the living room and pout.
Time passed and when it was just me and my aunt together, I mentioned the encounter I had with my cousin to her and she just said, "That's because she had no intention of giving me anything. She just wanted new jewelry." I felt really bad that my aunt had been cheated out of a mother's day present by my inability to see the warning signs. I shall now never underestimate the extent my cousin will go to get what she wants. And that little game she played will not go unanswered for.
So there it is. My one day a week of work. I doubt that the rest of my work days will be this interesting or enlightening for me.
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