Sometimes I long for the days when I’d bring home a couple bags of clothes from the mall, plop them onto my daughter’s bed, and handily close that shopping chapter until the next season. Outfitting a pre-teen adolescent girl is an entirely different story.

It’s loaded with potential pit falls and firestorms, many of which have to do with, in the eyes of my daughter, how frustratingly little her mother or school administrators know about fashion. I knew that going into it, so it was with great trepidation that I approached the Towson Town Center Mall with my daughter last Saturday. In our favor, we arrived before the crowds and scored an amazing parking space, which seemed like good karma. But whether it was enough to overcome the obstacles that lay ahead I couldn’t say.