Law of Attraction...?

The kids were at their dad’s this weekend so I had some time to myself. Saturday afternoon I was wandering aimlessly through the sale racks at a department store when an idea struck me. Maybe if I behaved as though I had an impending hot date, the opportunity for a hot date would actually present itself to me.

To be clear, it’s not as if I sit around reading The Secret every day while obsessing over a Vision Board on my bedroom wall, but I am willing to accept the possibility that there may be something to this Law of Attraction business. Positive thinking brings about positive results - seems reasonable to me.

So, think about a hot date to bring about a hot date. It all seemed so clear standing there amid the sale racks, it was practically an epiphany. And what do I do when I have a hot date? Buy cute underwear, obviously. Don’t you? So I headed up the escalator to the lingerie department to do just that. But the Universe had other plans for me that day.

As I came around the corner from housewares, I ran smack into my friend, Craig, loitering in the aisle between shoes and lingerie, waiting patiently while his wife and daughter shopped for shoes. As I talked to Craig, both his wife and daughter came out from among the shoe racks to say hi and show me what they were trying on. When Craig asked what I was doing there I turned bright red, mumbled something about looking for the restroom and bolted back towards the escalator.

Once safely on my way out of the store, I burst into tears feeling incredibly foolish for even considering shopping for cute underwear. I mean honestly – what was I thinking? Who was going to see them anyway? Stupid Law of Attraction mumbo-jumbo. Hmph.

Later that night, I sat at my neighborhood haunt in my perfectly plain, boring (yet comfortable) underwear and talked to an incredibly handsome stranger who had sent me a drink after I smiled at him from across the bar. He was visiting from out of town and I knew there was no future in it, but for a fleeting moment I thought about the cute underwear I might have been wearing had I just told the Universe to bite me and forged ahead with my plans despite the embarrassment of running into a male friend in the lingerie department. And part of me was lamenting the boring underwear I was wearing. But then the handsome stranger (who seemed very charming right up until this point) leaned close to be heard over the band and in a voice as smooth as silk said, “I bet you’re pretty disappointed that I don’t live in Seattle, aren’t you?”

Um... seriously?

I smiled sweetly, touched his heavily-muscled arm, leaned close and said, “Not as disappointed as you might think.”

Thanks, Universe. Once again, you were right.  You saved me $20 or so and I didn’t need cute underwear anyway... at least not that night.  And who knows?  Maybe I'll try this underwear-buying exercise again in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully Craig and his family won't need any more shoes just yet.