I went with my mother to the mall today.
We were shopping for a dress for me so I could look nice at this singing competition that I was doing. We shopped at all the cute stores, with my mother looking at most of the dresses with disgust. They were strapless, or had spaghetti straps, or were too short, too open, all the likes.
Of course, being like every other teenage girl, I absolutely adored these dresses.
My mom finally pulled me out of one of the last shops and told me that we were going to this lady-ish shop called "Maurice's" with clothes that I could never really fit in to. It wasn't one of my favorite stores. She took me in to look at the Juniors section, and I found most of the dresses extremely...hmm. How to put it? Ah! Sequiney. Yes, they were very sequiney.
The only dresses that were remotely okay were prom dresses that all cost about one hundred dollars each.
I was quite put out.
My mom was delighted that we were shopping there, and so she called out a saleslady who was totally over-excited to help me with my dress. She literally picked out all the dresses on clearance that she could find. I tried on like twenty dresses, and modeled all of them.
Finally, I had to tell my mom that that was it, that I didn't need to try any more.
She looked a little wounded, but I hugged her and then she smiled.
She agreed to take me to a store that I liked, but wasn't really my style. We ended up picking out a midnight blue, knee-lengnth dress with trimmed necklace. It was cute, but not gorgeous.
As we were leaving the mall, I told my mom, "Mom, I really do like that store we went in, the one where I tried so many dresses on."
"Maurice's?" She asked incredulously.
"Yeah." I said.
See that?
That's something important, right there.
Don't get it? Okay. I'll explain.
You see, in the movies that have that stupid little kid that doesn't know the meaning of Christmas or whatever, they go through a journey. They go back in time and see the birth of Jesus, or in the Polar express, the boy decides to believe in Santa after he sees him.
There is something deeper there, though.
This is a silly thing.
People don't even notice it.
The creators of the movies know that they are making the movie for an audience, so even if the boy in the polar express didn't actually believe in Santa and thought that the fat man was a crook, the boy had to say that he believed. They did it for a reaction.
Just like when your clueless math teacher asks you if you get the problem after she explained it the millionth time, you have to say yes. There is no saying no. It's the reaction.
When my mom took me to Maurice's and I told her I liked it, it was for a reason. The reaction. She needed to feel good about what she did.
And she did.
It's the reaction that counts.