amici miei—
the only consistency in life is change itself! c’est vrais .. mama mia ma quanto c’est vrais! anyhoo, as i did my luncheon wanderings on this gray and rainy second day of dicembre i had some revelations
1. buttons
the only good thing about going to an office-mondays-through-fridays in the garment district is being in close proximity to botani. botani, a button shop so vast with such ferocious florescent lighting, is a surprisingly welcoming place .. a silent cacophony of minutia. the fashionistas practice their patience and politely ask if there are student discounts. (there aren’t.)
les buttons
the lady who helped me search for the white button i’ve needed since last april—for a pajama top i’d like to incorporate into my dayware—was most kind. we found a near match. i didn’t have the heart to tell her i only needed one white button so i said, “i’ll take four.” (what extravagance, kippy! never mind i can barely sew…] the tortoiseshell button i sought proved to be more tricky. it’s for my olden tweed blazer, the one i’ve had in my possession since high school. the tag on the inside is tattered but the blazer is in otherwise tip top condition. the tag claims the blazer’s origins are “the wool shop” writ large in a font no longer fashionable. the whole jacket is the kind of woolen thing they don’t made these days. never mind it belonged to a friend’s mother and sat unworn in the back of her spacious closet. a jacket which we borrowed for some costume .. for some play.
the first time i wore the blazer i remember being mistaken for a francophone. i was seated in the waiting room of the Boston Language Institute paying my bill to learn how to teach english as a foreign language when a woman addressed me en francais. “mais vous n’etes pas francaise!” she marveled. “non!” I replied, and sank my head into my large scarf like a turtle with an ego too large for this world. how i love this little blazer.
the button shop woman assured me i could simply move a button hiding at the top of the jacket, under the collar, to where the most conspicuous button is missing. “it’s an old trick” she soothed. the white buttons were put into a little baggie and off i went.
2. banking
wells fargo is the bank I put my money into. “pourquois wells fargo, kippy?” you ask. “is it the wagon logo that fetches your eye? the glaring red and yellow colors that greet you in the atm station? the ubiquity of the bank in many american cities besides the one you usually live in?”
nay.
“together we’ll go far”
mes amis, i am a customer of wells fargo because mon pere is an employee and therefore i get a discount on ATM fees. ca va pour moi!
today i needed to make a deposit, which i usually do in the ATM machine but i had some other niggling questions about a transfer and a paper bond issued to me in a far off decade. so i waited in line marveling at how long it had been since i’d waiting in the line the bank.
there were screens behind the bank tellers and the flat screens played silent movies of wells fargo customers being happy about all their money in the bank. they smiled at each other and sat on a couch. then the movie changed and to a scene during dusk on a stark landscape in the far west. real live horses ran pulling a wells fargo carriage behind them. i wondered how much money it cost the bank to make the video. who shot it? how long did the shoot take? how did they cast the horses? who knows how to drive a horse carriage these days and how many takes did they need for the horses to run in unison pulling the wagon majestically over a snowy field in the barren but beautiful landscape?
i do not oppose the movie, you see, i simply marvel at it. another screen.
the teller was most helpful in telling me he couldn’t help me. i was invited to either wait in another line or try to do it online.
3. paper or plastic
i needed some mint tea. in i popped to le duane reade. i thought back to the original duane reade whom i met at a cocktail party once—a man so rugged he made your hair curl! i found my tea and waited in the line. i looked at all the christmas merchandise—my god! i thought, zeroing in on a particularly tasty candy, when did peppermint patties change the packaging from a papery tinfoil to plastic?
the packaging of yesteryear
i remembered years ago feeling the sense of dismay over the arrival of plastic—for it was a habit during a certain period of my life to buy a small peppermint patty for 25 cents in the late afternoon. when did the packaging change to plastic and why?? does anyone else recall folding the paper tinfoil in their youth?? how do youths play with discarded candy wrappers today? or are they too busy looking at their screens?!
the plastic wrap is not as fun to unfold and it’s bad for the environment
4. supplication to an application
the final stop was to hale and hearty for a soup. i waited in the line and confirmed that the turkey trimmings soup was worth a nibble. then i got in the next line to pay for my soup. anxiety rose within me.
“do you want to pay with the hale and hearty app?” the gal behind the counter said.
“no,” i stammered. “i have the old card.”
out came my little paper card with stamps on it.
“i know it will no longer be used here,” i said, crestfallen.
“do you know how to download the app?” the nice employee asked.
“i guess i will look for it on my phone!” i said a little too loudly and a little too enthusiastically. she took the card, stamped it, and handed it back to me.
“tomorrow when you come in you’ll be a winner,” she said.
my heart felt light for a moment and i almost asked if i’d still be a winner when i switch to the app. never mind that “app” sounds like an abbreviation for appetizer!
i would rather buy 10 soups and get the 11th for free
mes amis, i am left wondering: when did everything change? and how will i feel when i am 80? (mind you, i am already older than the hills! i speak in euphemism here.. ) just yesterday my beloved called me on the telephone. a sense of dread took hold. what could be so good or bad that he was calling me and not texting or emailing? i prepared myself for either very excellent or very awful news. instead he wanted to go over a vacation choice. a quotidian question, wonderfully prosaic. i couldn’t shake the dread though and ended our call sooner than i’d have liked to.
don’t get me wrong. i love our modern era! but will our wrists survive all the typing? will my wrists survive the downward dogs i don’t do enough of? i still get a kick out of sending and receiving text messages—especially imessage—but what’s next?? have humans always felt this way?? are there other humans in history who felt like they didn’t belong in the right era?
holler if you hear me,
kippy
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