Reflections on trip: There’s no escaping yourself, or Louis Vuitton stores, in Vegas

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and thank goodness for that. I say this because paying $13.75 for a can of Diet Coke doesn’t need to become a trend that infiltrates the Kansas City area.

I recently tagged along on one of my husband’s business trips to Las Vegas. It’s a city I haven’t visited since 2014, and that was for one of my daughter’s dance competitions.

To this day, the location still perplexes me. A three-day event for children being held at a casino seemed rather odd, but I was in the minority on the issue. I know this because when I expressed this thought among other dance moms, I was called “uptight,” “no fun” and “stick-in-the-mud.”

Back to my most current trip: I found myself awash in new curiosities and conundrums, starting with a vast number of mirrors. There are mirrored walkways, mirrored walls, mirrored ceilings, mirrored halls — even buildings seemingly clad in mirrors. You cannot escape your image. It’s as if you’re being haunted by your reflection.

Now if you’re perfect looking, I can see how this would be an unfettered delight, but if you’re not exactly super-model material it can be frightening. And let’s be honest: Most of the people enjoying Vegas are not in the “model” category.

I, being solidly “not model” material, literally experienced the five stages of grief over being continually subjected to my reflection. At first, I went into denial. As in, surely I don’t look that bad. Then I got angry at the idiots who thought acres and acres of mirrors were a solid design choice.

After I worked through that, I made a bargain with myself that I would not eat any more macarons the entire trip, as if somehow that would instantly help alter the reflection staring back at me. My no macarons edict threw me into a whirlwind of sadness which birthed the conspiracy theory that perhaps all the mirrors are intended to make people feel dejected, so they gambled more to cope with their misery.

Finally, I just accepted that if I wanted to remain happy in Vegas I needed to entertain the lie that every single reflective surface in the city was akin to a fun house mirror and distorted my image. (I’m happy to report that embracing this delusional thinking worked.)

Yet, the whole mirror conspiracy was not the most mind boggling of my trip. It was the fact that there’s a Louis Vuitton store, known for its high-end handbags, approximately every 50 yards along the Las Vegas strip. They were so close together you could throw a counterfeited Vuitton Neverfull tote from one store to the next.

I was so intrigued by the plethora of Louis Vuitton stores that I felt I had to investigate. This proved to be a difficult task, starting with the fact that I had to stand in a line and wait to go into the store. I’m sure this is a marketing ploy because the stores aren’t crowded. Perhaps it was to induce the feeling that you have to be deemed worthy of breaching the inner sanctum of paying way too much for a purse.

Once inside I couldn’t get anyone to answer my question as to why so many stores are close together. In fact, the response I received to my query was a visit from security. (Alas, this was not the first time I’ve encountered security at a Louis Vuitton store. Years ago in Sacramento I got in trouble for bringing a Diet Coke into the store.) But I did have a woman shopping share with me that she and her friends were on a “walking tour” of all the Vuitton stores on the strip and it was “ah-mazing.”

Hmm, I don’t know if I agree. The good news is they don’t have to walk far, but ugh all the mirrors they’ll have to endure.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.