Do you ever get the wrong mail delivered to your house? We live in a neighborhood with one of those post boxes that has a bunch of slots all together, and sometimes our postal lady slips up and gives us someone else’s pool maintenance equipment catalog or another neighbor’s DirectTV offers.
This week I accidentally got the elderly neighbor lady’s clothing catalog. Really, I should have walked it over to her house immediately, but I was editing my WIP and time got away from me. It sat on the counter for a day and I was going to get to it, but before I could, my preschool daughter brought it to me on my bed.
“Let’s read this together, Mommy. We can pick out the cute things.”
It was full of “cute” things–caftan house dresses, jeans with elastic waists, comfy tunic shirts in loud prints. My daughter LOVED them. She showed me the embroidered/sequined tops and found the ones she thought were best. It was a cute exercise, really pure, actually. I would’ve looked at them and said, “Whoa. I hope these are not in my near future.” But not this darling–she was able to see the beauty of them all. Bless her heart.
Until…we flipped to the undergarments page. There we saw ladies’ undergarments in stretch fabrics with weird flower prints. Bras, mostly. My darling’s reaction was immediate and dismissive.
“We don’t need those.” She turned the page. “They look a lot like zucchinis.”
Yes, yes they do. And if I hadn’t sat down to read this catalog with her and enjoy the cargo yoga pants’ joys, I would never have known such deep truths. Motherhood is always an education.
(Just now, as I typed it, I think I realized maybe she meant bikinis.)
For some reason, my mother-in-law’s mail (at least the junk mail) followed us to Layton, Utah from Salt Lake, then to AZ, and now here to NC. My mother -in-law passed away 3 1/2 years ago. Most of the time I just chuck it, but one time we got a letter that looked all official and so I opened it. Turned out to be nothing, but it’s still a little weird to be have it follow us across the country.
That is really weird, Megan! I wonder why. Spooky.
Spooky- my sister-in-law moved here from Linden California three years ago. She still gets jumk mail from there but worst of all her son died six years ago and every once in a while she gets a notice that his life insurance is about to lapse.
Junk mail and junk e-mail WHY?
Exactly! Why and WHY! Good point, Larry. (And that is a bit unsettling, that kind of mail. I had a friend who was widowed and Facebook kept suggesting “Reconnect with Kam?” her deceased husband. It was as if FB thought had some special powers of the occult. Very unsettling.)
You didn’t realize before that she meant bikinis? Why would bras look like zucchinis?
It took a long time for this to dawn on me, Rachel, because I was laughing too hard.
She definitely meant bikinis.