Tries to ignore it until she can’t

Lauren does her best to ignore the ads on the speaker, but she can only put up with her speaker yelling about diapers, as if it is trying to tell her to wear some, for so long. After more than an hour of it, Lauren can’t take it anymore. She turns off the music and decides she’ll just stream a movie instead.

It goes well. When an ad about shoes pops up early on, Lauren doesn’t even care. She puts up with it because at least it isn’t a diaper ad. That sentiment holds up for each commercial break the movie takes, and even despite the ads Lauren still feels pretty invested in it. A quarter of the way through the movie, Lauren’s on the edge of her seat, giving the movie her undivided attention. Then it cuts to commercial break again, and Lauren wants to scream. It’s a diaper commercial. Lauren fights the urge to just turn it off, coming too far into this movie to give up on it now. Each commercial break after that sees more and more of her commercials being about diapers. By the time the movie finishes, Lauren feels emotionally exhausted. She could probably name every brand of diapers (kids, preteen, etc.) or “training underwear" at this point, something she has never needed or wanted to do. Was this because she bought those diapers for Vanessa? It doesn’t matter, Lauren decides, shaking the thought out of her head. As long as she doesn’t interact with them, they’ll go away eventually. She will just have to bear it until then.

A yawn escapes Lauren’s mouth, and she suddenly notices how tired she feels. Her eyes glance at the time. It’s earlier than she usually goes to bed, but maybe she could make an exception after the day she’s had.