Lady Bracknell's Phrase

Today in the café at my company they've set up one of those temporary storefront things where a couple of ladies are hawking a boatload of designer purses. I suppose it's cool that there's something other than work happening on a Friday, but it kinda seems like an ambush -- today being payday and all. I mean, people can choose whether they want to buy them or not, but having this thing right there in the middle of the campus provides very little chance for the person with low impulse control to avoid at least browsing through them.
Which seems to be the case, because it's like a frikkin' mosh pit over there.
Plus, it's purses -- which next to shoes is one of those things women seem to always have a soft spot for buying whether they need to or not. I mean, I know that's how selling things is supposed to work -- but it's not like the store is always there. Somebody let them in here, you know?

It's not a bad thing, just kinda weird in the sense that the audience they're shooting for seems kinda one-sided. Corporate culture is still steeped in the mires of political correctness, which I suppose tries to help keep the working atmosphere focused, but then when you see things like this you're not so sure. I mean, there's no way I'd ever expect to walk out there and see a bunch of tables pushed together and stacked to the gills with guy-oriented impulse buy items.
Could you imagine a mass email arriving in your inbox saying:
"Today in the café you'll have the chance to browse through a wide variety of Hooters Girl swimsuit calendars, naughty playing cards, "I don't wake up angry, I just let her sleep" and "Federal Boobie Inspector" t-shirts, and while they last -- those hats that you can put two beers in so you don't have to use your hands to drink while you're watching the game."
But beyond all that, the thing that struck me the most when I was waiting in line to buy my lunch and watching all this taking place was that the purses they were trying to sell were huge. Big old shoulder strap numbers bordering on luggage size. Is that the style now -- I thought it was going the other way? Like I would really know anyways, but these things remind me of the purses that my mother used to carry back when I was a kid.

It was the 70's, so styles were obviously different, but for years my mom lived and died by this enormous burgundy-bright red leather sort of thing. Actually the color bordered more on orange than anything else, which never matched anything else she was wearing.
She absolutely lived out of that thing.
It had pockets all over it, a pair of tiny straps stained to the breaking point, and continually bulged outwards because of all the crap she kept in there. Gum, tissues, wallets, notepads, calculators, sunglasses, paperback novels, toys she'd taken away from us and forgotten to give back, stuff for her job, spare change, coupons, small children, Sherpas.. You name it -- it was in there.

The funny thing about it though was she was always losing stuff. My brother and I almost always got into trouble messing with stuff in line at the supermarket because there would always come a point where she was doing that "holding one strap open with the other on her shoulder while she furiously dug through her purse with her free hand" move. Once she started doing that we knew we could start rummaging through the candy or magazines on the racks, because we knew her eyes were off of us.

Of course, once she realized that her sunglasses were actually on the top of her head or that she had already put her checkbook on the counter she'd snap her eyes back to us. The trick was to catch her quickly in that second of embarrassed exasperation, that moment where she'd actually say things like "I really need to go through this thing and take out some things, don't I?" where you could sort of mumble things like "Hey mom can I have this snickers bar?" and she'd be so wrapped up in her own Waterloos that she'd always answer:
"Just give it to the lady so she can ring it up, we're in a hurry!"
[Listening to: Faith No More, "Caffeine"]

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