Why Kids Don't Belong at Frederick's

Call it "Flashback Week" if you want, but I've been remembering all sorts of crazy things that have happened to me. Today I was thinking of embarrassing moments in motherhood and flashed back to someone else's embarrassing moment in motherhood. I was still just a "cool aunt" figure.
My best friend, we'll call her Anne, was divorced and had custody of her 4 year old daughter, we'll call her Marie. (Yes, you know who you are because I'm using your middle names in an effort to keep you "innocent.") Anyway, Anne had been seeing a guy for several months and decided to buy him silk boxer shorts for Christmas. They didn't fit.
So, like any good girlfriend, she volunteered to exchange them for him because he was too busy (read: too embarrassed) to do it himself. We piled into her big ole blue beast of a car and drove to the mall where we found (ta-da!) Frederick*s of Hollywood. The return/exchange line was a mile long. And Marie was bored. I took her to get some french fries and we looked at some toys at a toy store and she rode one of those mechanical horse rides. We went back and saw that Anne was next in line, so we busied ourselves walking around the store.
Like most four year olds, Marie was very impressed by all the colors and textures of the racks and racks of clothes. "Woooo, this one's shiny" and "Yuck, this one makes my hands itch" and "I like this pink one with the mirror things on it" were a few of the comments she made. Then it happened. The murmuring, chatting and music all seemed to go
strangely quiet all at once. And Marie's voice could be heard
shouting, "HEY! MY MOM'S GOT ONE OF THESE!" I looked up and over at the cashier where I could see Anne's shoulders tense up and her buttcheeks clench. Since I didn't want her thinking I'd shown her child something totally inappropriate I yelled to her, "RELAX! IT'S A ROBE!"
The whole place cracked up.