Dotty Parker

costume fever

BrilliantEditor and I are working on our costumes. I only just figured out what I want to be so I went to the fabric store to pick out a pattern.

Sitting at the pattern table is usually a tiny bit weird in that conversations are always happening around you. This time, though, was weirder than usual. There's usually only one of these categories at a time.

There are the fashionistas who look through pattern books, wear glasses with thick, dark frames, who tend to wear turtleneck sweaters, and speak dismissively of any synthetic fiber. (So why in the world would they shop in that store?)

There are the sewing moms who bring their children with them. During the week, during school hours, anyway, it's babies and toddlers who scream, but tend to stand still. The screaming bothers me, but is generally gone in ten minutes.

There are people who like to sew or are learning to sew. They may or may not have children or grandchildren. They may or may not have an event they're sewing for. It doesn't matter because they look through, get their patterns, put back the ones they don't want, and stack the books back up.

Finally there are the college students who come in for things that they don't know anything about. I don't expect them to know anything, really, but they can be discouragingly ignorant and annoyingly demanding.

On this day of days, the pattern table had two fashionistas chatting with each other quietly.

It had a sewing mom with FIVE little girls. Screaming, yelling, fighting, cranky little girls (and who can blame them? They'd been in the store for nearly an hour) who ran all over the place and a mom who screamed at them and hit them. Not hard, I don't think, but I heard a "smack" noise and then some kind of child noise then the mom said, "You want one, too?" and then another "smack".

They disturbed me.

I was there, and thus disturbed.

But the best was the pair of college students looking for costume patterns. One sewed, one didn't. The one who didn't sew was making all kinds of silly comments like, "Hey, do they sell safety pins here?" and "What is that costume about? Cher meets an alien?"

But my favorite was, "I always thought Raggedy Andy was a fire hydrant."

Your guess is as good as mine, but it's statements like that, boy oh boy, that make my world go round.

[Side note: when I visited Portland, Oregon the radio was generally crappy. The one station I could make myself listen to was this weird talk radio where they had a pretend guest who was aging and tended to say odd things.

My favorite was this: "There are no scissors in the ocean."]

Posted by dotty at October 26, 2003 09:31 PM