To The Manufacturer/Packagers of Women's Underwear,
Dear Sirs or Madams,
Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a recent purchaser of a 7 pair package of women's underwear from your esteemed company. I chose your underwear because it came in a pleasing array of cheerful and bright colors, –raspberries, lemon yellows, a tempting tangerine! – that reminded me of italian ice flavors one might purchase of a summer day. I thought long and hard about my purchase, standing there behind the red shopping trolley, whilst other shoppers parted around me like fish in a busy brook. Other packages of panties beckoned, promising the dull but reliable joys of beige underpants that don't show through sheer fabrics, basic black with a no-roll waistband. A 5 pack of flowered panties also seemed promising, but their flowers, bud-like and pastel, seemed juvenile. With a rush of thrilling abandon I gaily threw your 7 pair package into the cart with my cereal and sandwich baggies and made my purchases, my heart gently floating skyward like a child's wayward balloon. The promise of new and pretty panties beckoned even as Spring seemed to recede into an unreachable horizon.
When I got home I hurried to the sanctity of my boudoir to avail myself of your shrink wrapped glories. The raspberries, the tangerine, the sunny lemon yellow, all there, glowing with a promise to lift the chill hand of this eternal winter. But beneath them? Oh! Shame and ignominy! 2 pairs of insipid "zebra" print by way of a child's scrawling and 2 pairs of a muddy, muddled print one can only describe as duck hunter camo! Should I choose to stand nude, saving my panties, in front of a duck blind in Arkansas, surely I will blend in! One assumes I will now need to fashion the tangerine panties into a tiny jacket to alert the hunters to my presence. Or perhaps you did have my 37 year old, suburban mother of two self in mind, perhaps in case of HOME INVASION I am to strip to panties and stand motionless in front of my potted ficus in the living room! The intruders will be unaware of my stealthy, though chilly, presence.
The zebra print pants were clearly meant for when I go on safari, as I am wont to do! I am forever trekking off to the savannah and as I pack I think to myself, IF ONLY I HAD ZEBRA PANTIES! THEN MY DREAM OF BEING EATEN BY LIONS WHILST IN MY ALTOGETHERS COULD COME TRUE.
I have few material joys in life, underwear packagers and manufacturers, my "disposable" income going to things like dental appointments and field trip fees, but one of the few indulgences we allow ourselves, the parents, the overworked, the underpaid, is a pair of well-fitting and good looking underpants. Panties that allow us the illusion of a carefree and energetic existence. Do not hide your off-brand factory-second bargain basement panty patterns in with the cute ones! This is the not the kind of surprise that delights. This is upsetting and disconcerting like a surprise pregnancy, or a surprise audit.
No thank you, sirs and/or madams, no thank you!
Good day.
I said GOOD DAY!
Disgustedly,
Suzanne
I too am sometimes tempted to purchase a multi-pack of pretty drawers only to spot those two random and awful pairs of horrifying design that I could never feel good about wearing even on laundry day. So it's back to the drawing board and painstakingly examining each package. It takes me forever.
ReplyDeleteThese were so cunningly folded that ONLY their plain white waistbands were visible! I felt duped!
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