Female cloning patterns

A quick trip to Walmart (the best kind) and I'm hurrying toward the check-out lanes. I briefly wonder why the store is so crowded, take a look around and realize it's the first of the month. Social security checks have arrived and are getting spent. I pass a distracted-looking gray-haired woman standing in the aisle, then nearly stumble when I see her several feet in front of me. How'd she do that? I glance back, see her behind me. I look forward and there she is. When I reach the front of the store, God help me, but there she is again. So I stop; I look; I contemplate. And I know. These women are not the same woman, or magic reflections of her, probably not related and in all likelihood do not even know one another. Short gray hair poorly styled, buttoned down short sleeve floral shirts, khaki-colored Capri shorts, sandals. Thin-framed, over-sized glasses, turned down mouths, expressions of either annoyance or confusion.

It gives me a chill, I tell you. Is that my future self, that colorless, anonymous, replicated woman? I pay for my purchases, walk to the car, totally unaware of my steps. For a minute or two, I sit in my front seat and feel sick to my stomach. I do not want to lose who I am. Then, after a moment, something occurs to me and offers some comfort.

This cloning of females starts early, before we have any control. Tiny, sweetly ruffled dresses, little bows in our downy hair, dainty shoes and lacy socks. What darlings baby girls are! Later, shorts and T-shirts to match our playmates; as adolescents, we'd rather be locked in the cellar than to wear one strand of our hair differently or clothes that are the least bit off the style of our peer group. We become soccer moms with sprayed-on tans, chin-length page boys or bobs. In middle-age, we adopt relaxed jeans and larger T-shirts to cover a waist that's no longer there. The Capris and buttoned-down short-sleeve floral shirts are next. No wonder we eventually adopt the annoyed and confused expressions I saw in Walmart. Who are we and how we got to this place? Why won't anyone speak to us, wait on us, smile at us? We have essentially become invisible. All we know is that we move with each other, like a herd. In that herd is security, acceptance and, for someone like me who doesn't like to be part of a crowd, a good-sized helping of depression.

I recall the poem "When I'm an old woman, I shall wear purple." Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. But I'll come up with something. And I think I'll make a point of noticing, speaking to, and smiling at that invisible population. I can't do a thing about the Capris, but maybe I can change the expressions.