The other day I was on Maxwell Air Force Base and decided I'd go on over to the thrift store there. Oh, don't let it fool you - they have a LOT of brand new stuff there; things with tags even. I highly doubt anyone...at least not most people...would save the tags, wear the clothes for a year or two and then invest in one of those "plastic hang-tag doohickey" devices to pop the tags back on - in order to sell it for a whopping $5.00 instead of $3.00 at the thrift shop.
Well, I'm walking around and I find a couple pairs of pants and then I spy "them" - just hanging there with their tags intact. "Ralph Lauren" blue and white cotton...Capri pants!
But they aren't really Capri pants in the sense of the ones Marilyn Monroe had to change out of in "The Seven Year Itch" because, as Marilyn as "The Girl" says, "You just can't drink champagne in Matador pants." (I originally wrote "Capri" pants...but someone's comment, at another site I post this, got me thinking and I believe she says "Matador"...altho, technically the ones she wore in the film typically were known as "Capris" or "clamdiggers")...
(Actually a pair of Marilyn's own Capri pants at an auction site.)
...but wider, stumpier versions...
(Not mine...but supposedly an actual pair of Ralph Lauren Capri pants, which look totally different from mine, on another auction site.)
As you can tell - these are much less sexy versions...but...the kind that every woman around my age are sporting here in Montgomery, Alabama. And, if you remember my "Part I" blog about them (that blog here)...everyone that is...except me.
As you can tell - these are much less sexy versions...but...the kind that every woman around my age are sporting here in Montgomery, Alabama. And, if you remember my "Part I" blog about them (that blog here)...everyone that is...except me.
I walk away from them...but I am lured back by the $85 price tag still hanging on - angled to face me as if to say "c'mon, I USED to be $85 and now I'm $6.00 - you just gotta...even IF you never wear me".
So, I succumbed and tried them on.
I must interject...a little bit of backstory here...
I belong to an online forum which is predominantly made up of women - and I asked them "WHY? Why would ANY woman wear these God-awful things?" To my astonishment, they were wearing them as well - and LOVED them. Again, I must not have gotten that memo - but it surely was making the rounds...and dammit...I wasn't going to be THE only woman over 40 who didn't own a pair.
I bought them.
I have since worn them several times and, contrary to my self-conscious pre-conceived notions, no one looks at me like I'm an outcast...and not one person stopped in their tracks to point and laugh. To be fair about it, though, no one has come up to me and shown me any secret handshakes or anything. But I have been given multitudes of compliments about them -- so I gather the clandestine aromatherapy candle buying meetings and "Pampered Chef" party invites can't be too far off.
