I hate shopping for clothes. One reason is that my timing is all off. I can’t get used to the fact that by the time cold weather rolls around, winter clothing is as hard to find as decent breakfast taco in North Austin.

This observation was highlighted by an experience I had last week. I was going to a funeral in Oklahoma and I knew it would be cold, so I wanted to buy a scarf. Piece of cake, I thought.

Once again, that’s what I get for thinking.

My thought process went something like this (the following is known as the Socratic Method, and it comes in handy if you need a simple, fool-proof tool to help you come to exactly the wrong conclusion): it’s winter, so people need winter apparel. A scarf is winter apparel. Ergo, a scarf will be easy to find, right? Wrong. When it was 40 degrees in Austin, a scarf was not to be found. Bathing suits, yes – but scarves, not so much.

The first clue that my quest was destined to fail should have been the displays in the store windows. I didn’t see any scarves but I did see lots of bikinis. This would have been great had I been looking for a bikini, but I was not. Weather aside, a bathing suit – even a black one – is not proper attire for a funeral. Plus, I was rushed and didn’t have time for a waxing.

Snotty clerks make a bad experience worse. In one store I visited, the clerk actually snickered when I told him that I wanted to buy a piece of winter clothing in the middle of, you know, winter. In another store (I won’t mention the name but it starts with a “D” and rhymes with “illards”) the clerk heard my request and rolled his eyes so violently that he got dizzy and fell into a rack of cashmere bathrobes. Fortunately, his co-workers were trained in Clerk First Aid and revived him by waving a pair of silk Armani boxers under his nose.

In another store I visited, the helpful salesperson said they had put away their winter clothing right around Labor Day, and told me that a large, knitted potholder from housewares would be as close as I could get to a scarf. I was so desperate that I actually considered this option, but the “Cookin’ Lasts – Kissin’ Don’t” appliqués clashed with my gray suit.

I went to seven different stores in two different malls looking for something warm to wrap around my neck, but I finally found something. I paid more for it than I wanted to, and I wasn’t really crazy about the color, but I was desperate. It wasn’t a total waste of time and money, though -- my wife can wear it to the beach next summer. A bikini will look a lot better on her than it does on me.