Ever since the Women's World Cup began I wanted to buy a United States jersey. But the thing holding me back was that I wasn't sure whether they had US women's team jerseys for men to wear. In a sense it wouldn't make any sense, men wearing women's jerseys. But it is the 21st century, so why the hell not? Then again, I didn't want to go around wearing what, to other people (though not to me, since I'm not fashionably conscious at all), would obviously be a shirt designed for women. And showing support for the women's team by wearing a men's team was definitely not an option. I want to wear the jersey of an actual winner.
My initial fears were correct. Nike did not make women's jerseys for men ... up until this World Cup. For the first time ever, both of Team USA's jerseys, the home in white and the away in blue, had fits for men as well as women. I saw a review specifically pointing that out at Nike's website, and then I went to the Mall of America's Nike Store and saw that there were jerseys dedicated to men there as well.
The only thing holding me was the price: $90. As much as I wanted in on the loyalty, I didn't have that much money to spend on discretionary items, especially with my bank account so low. And, deep down, I am a bandwagoner. I did not want to buy a jersey of a team that would lose to Japan in the final. So I decided to wait. And I was wrong about the team, admittedly.
So, in the afterglow of the victory I went online, because at this point I was totally going to buy a jersey now! The price of the home white jersey for men (the jersey the team was wearing for both the final and their semifinal victory over Germany) wasn't $90 anymore. They were actually $69. A price drop? Wouldn't the price, if anything, have risen since the team won the World Cup? Or did they drop the price since, technically, Team USA should have a third star over the crest, therefore the jerseys they were selling throughout the tournament is now out-of-date?
Sixty-nine bucks was still a little too steep for me. But then I remembered all the Nike E-Card. It's a gift certificate that you can download onto your smartphone and get a discount either at a store (where the person just scans it) or online (by entering the code). I don't know if you do the My Coke Rewards thing, where you enter all these codes that are on the underside of the caps of bottles of Coke products, but I have done it for, oh, since the millennium began. Don't know why, but I've kept it up for ages. Anyway, I've accrued enough points to get $10 off through a Nike E-Card. Therefore, I could get this jersey for $59.
Then I set up a Nike account, put the jersey on my Wish List, then went to bed. Why didn't I just use the E-Card and buy the jersey right then and there? For the life of me, I don't know. The only tangible theory I have in my mind at this moment was that buying the jersey online meant it would come home in a box for my parents to take in, and I didn't want my parents to, potentially, come down on me for buying shit I don't really have the money for. Do I know that for a fact? No. But honestly, I don't know if I have another good reason why I just didn't buy it then.
Ever since I decided not to buy it Sunday night the week regarding the Team USA soccer jersey has been a Seinfeldian shitshow. I went back online either Monday or Tuesday night determined to just use the Coke Rewards points for the Nike discount, only to see that the jersey was sold out. (Could it have been sold out Sunday night? Right now, I hope so.) My only hope then was to see if the Nike Store at MOA had one. They did ... for $90. So I bit the bullet and decided to buy it for $80. But then I thought that I could get a Nike E-Card through one of my two credit cards, both of which I have rewards for. Looked through them and saw that I could get, in fact, a $50 E-Card through my American Express. I was going to buy it, but then I needed my card's information, and (long story; maybe I should blog about it) I don't have it, so I couldn't download it. The people at the Nike Store said there were a lot of jerseys in men's fit still available, so I called AmEx and told them my card was lost; I would wait to get my new card in the mail (some thing I should have done for a while now; I'll talk about it later), download that Nike E-Card, then go to MOA to get it. But last (Friday) night I called them and they said they were sold out. You fuckers said you weren't going to sell out!
Finally I realized something I should have realized from the start: Why not try Amazon? And there, a seller is offering a U.S. Women's team jersey, home white, in my size, for $59. That would be $19 more expensive than what I thought I could get it for if I could have used a discount through American Express, but it would have been $21 if, say, I used the $10 discount through My Coke Rewards off the shirt at full price. OK, all these prices are just hypotheticals, I admit that. I just hope that this guy actually comes through with it. I bought it, but there is no way to know for certain that he'll send it or even if he has it. This guy has no reviews either for or against, so I am really, really scared that I'm going to get fucked over.
I'm not sure if getting a jersey is worth it now.
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