CMIL Goes Shopping

One weekend when my wife was in college she thought it would be nice to go shopping for clothes with her mother (my crazy-mother-in-law) when the stores were having a huge 80% off sale. They went to the department store and started in the juniors section (since my wife was 19 or so at the time that would make sense). My CMIL made a bee line for one rack of clothes. My wife finished looking in that department and CMIL was still looking at that first rack. My wife then checked out the rest of the floor. CMIL was still working on that first rack. My wife told her she was going to check the other floors. When she had finished with that 5 story department store, she went to tell CMIL she was going to the store next door. CMIL was easy to find, since she was still looking at the same rack. My wife finished looking at the second department store and was ready to go home. She found CMIL pretty easily, since she was still looking at the same rack of clothes!!!

How can a person spend 4 to 5 hours looking at the same rack of clothes? Easy if you are CMIL. She was examining each stitch on each piece of clothing!! She was making sure the pattern matched up perfectly at every seam. She didn't buy anything. Apparently she didn't like the style. Maybe because my 45 year old or so CMIL had spent her entire time looking at clothes for teenagers?

This brings up an interesting question. Why did my wife wait until we had been married and had kids before she told this story to me? Maybe she thought I would run away in terror?