Flipping and Flopping

I went shopping with Satan last week. I mean my mother.

She and I had gone for a Mother’s Day pedicure (she treated!), and we realized, as we slipped our feet into those flimsy paper salon flip-flops that they were simply not going to work. We could barely hobble across the parking lot to the car, sliding and lurching and shuffling in our chintzy flops. So we stopped at Target to pick up a pair that would carry us out to lunch and beyond.

I browsed the $2.99 selection while Mom moseyed over to the $12.99 display – an entire wall of embellished flip flops – fancy, pretty, sequined, ribboned flip flops in every color of the rainbow.

Technically, according to the Shop-Not rules, I shouldn’t have purchased even the $2.99 pair. But my mom had just splurged on Mother’s Day pedicures for us, and I wanted my toes to remain unsmeared and pristine (plus I’d tossed the only grungy pair I owned at the end of last summer, so I really did not have a viable flip flop option).

“Are you sure you don’t want a pair of these?” my mom called from behind a tower of shoe boxes stacked shoulder-high.

“Ohhhhhh, those are the cutest.” I admired the woven slides as I helped my mom wriggle her freshly painted toes into the shoe.

And then I tried them on. Twice. “Just to see.”

And I walked up and down the row. And I looked at my feet from the side and from the front and from behind in the little triangle mirror at the end of the aisle.

“I’ll buy them for you,” she offered.

“No, no, I can’t,” I said, sliding my foot out and placing the shoes back in the box.

I strolled back over to the cheapie display to decide between turquoise and magenta.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to buy these for you?” my mom asked again, the box tucked under her arm.

I looked longingly at the shoes, picked one up off the shelf again. Tried it on a third time.

“Mom! Seriously! Quit it! You’re like shopping with Satan!”

And then we laughed at the fact that I’d nearly thrown nine months of Shop-Not out the window for a lousy pair of $12.99 flip flops.

What's your latest temptation? Are you staying strong or caving like a house of cards?