Zara's Changing Rooms or a Microcosmos of Microbourgeois

Life has some funny turns sometimes. This Christmas holidays happened an interesting one to me. We were doing some shopping at one of these huge malls, Gran Via II, the heaven of the microbourgeoisie, the last social rank before the plain lumpen that lives in the ugly and shabby district that surrounds the mall, which I guess I belong to.

They flock to places like that one to kill time there during holidays, specially in those cloudy and dull winter days, and make the last purchases. And, in the same way that there are plenty of well-known fastfood chains, there are also the same McClothing retailers that exist everywhere, like Zara, and all the pack that belongs to the same group (Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear, Oysho, Uterqüe, Stradivarius and Bershka).

Two of the most boring things on Earth are flying and waiting for a girl in a changing room at Zara. For the first one, I've always thought there should use some Mariachis or acrobats from le Cirque du Soleil to make long flights more entertaining. For the latter, a bar with enough alcoholic drinks would do the trick. In the specific case of that Zara, there was, at least, a sofa to sit down while waiting for the lady. I could see some weird scenes among the fauna swarming such environment, myself included.

There was this Muslim girl trying on clothes over her actual clothes, courtains drawn back, while her husband was overseeing her. A couple of Dutch girls were exchanging clothes between neighbouring booths while showing her buttocks and thongs to the casual audience. I could even see, without asking, some jobbed boobs from a vulgar Vanesa who was trying on some party gown two sizes too small.

And what about me? I was waiting again, as usual, for the same reason all guys there were waiting. I've been in such situation so many times, I could even write a book. It would be entitled "Waiting at Zara's all around the World; from Osaka to Barcelona", better than Callejeros!

And the turn? After waiting for almost an hour, plus the time previously spent going around the whole mall looking for a specific ウアンピエス; after having tried on all possible variations of the same dress, in color and size; after having in fact bought it, on our way out, we stumbled upon a dress I already knew from another occasion.

I recognized it immediately. It had been with a different girl, back in September, in a different Zara, in a stormy afternoon, while looking for an allegedly "white" one piece dress. We couldn't find it that day, but today it was there. The comical situation was that she instinctively took it, and also the other ones similar to that which were arranged by chance together, and swiftly headed again towards the changing room to try them on.

At that moment, I was totally astonished. How can it be that two different girls, despite coming from nearby places, were picking the same clothes under the same conditions? Was it me that I'm frequenting the same kind of girls, with the same mind set and tastes? Was it them that coming from the same place share the same predictible behavior? I don't know, but maybe the likelihood that there is no free will exists after all.

Hopefully, I convinced her to forget about the new dress and stick to the first election arguing that this one was far warmer and more suited for winter than the other one. I didn't want to see her going around with such dress looking like that despicable girl. Too bad a joke, even for my oversized inclination for tasteless jokes. However, I can't help myself laughing at the coincidence, if this is what it is!