The things you notice.
I stepped into the elevator yesterday afternoon and in crowded a woman, mid-forties, dressed in a cheap, Le Garage, polyester suit, cut for a 20-year-old, but she was determined. Pink, plastic jewelry clasped her neck and wrists like a vice, had I reached out an index finger and pricked her arm she would have toppled over, such was the height of her patent leather heels. She flicks her head, gives her purse an arrogant little toss over her shoulder, cocks her head and says to the man standing to my left,
‘So. Whadiddya think of the presentation?’
The watermelon Bubble Yum she’s chewing snaps violently, the bubble inflating and collapsing in surrender behind bright orange lips.
‘Brilliant,’ he lies. ‘What a great team.’
She runs a hand with a chipped manicure through drugstore-dyed hair.
‘Yeah –sure. I did all the work.’
The man standing beside me says nothing, gives a smile that hints at sympathy that isn’t quite intended for her. And I got the distinct notion that at that very moment, this man and I were overwhelmed by a crippling sense of pity for this woman, this worker, this probable wife and mother, who teeters into work every day, armed with green and pink highlighters and an advanced understanding of the photocopier machine, this woman whose husband likely belongs to a bowling league and whose children don’t open up to her, this woman who scans the mall for sidewalk sales and the publi sac for coupons, this woman whose co-workers almost certainly don’t like her and she can’t understand why –didn’t she remember Josée’s birthday, didn’t she work late almost every night of the week? This woman who feels the need to claim responsibility for projects she does not share in order to impress passersby and elevator riders.
Pity, can be an awful thing.
7 comments:
Wow. I like this post. Very brutal and honest.
pity can wind one into such teeth-sucking silence sometimes. funny and sad how people's coping mechanisms can be so transparent. where attempts at obfuscation and reclamation just reinforce the problem...
popping watermelon bubblegum unabashedly in an enclosed space like an elevator would be enough to rattle my ire.
How sad that those who are seeking, and need, just a small amount of recognition instead evoke pity from total strangers. I will not, however, concur that pity is warranted.
hehe, you made my day ! :)
Great description H. :) Sometimes people just have a moment of weakness, maybe this was hers.
She stood in the back of the antiseptic elevator, arms crossed in front of herelf to protect her Neiman Marcus Burberry Coat from the hoi paloi. Her face carefully frozen to hide her thoughts. As she stared clinically ahead, a middle aged woman crowded her way onto the elevator. The woman was brazenly wearing a clatter of pastel colored bracelets, a pink necklace and pinky ring. She stood one 1/2 floor higher than the others in the elevator in her Patent Leather heels.
The woman was struggeling vainly to maintain a twenty-something verve. She worked at a “youth driven” marketing firm specializing in youth fashion accessories, jewelry and other teenage impulse items. Her last great success was at expanding the Bubble Yum Flavors end isle section at Target. It won praise from her superiors and Bubble Yum sales to early teens had been phenomenal. That was 2 years and 20 pounds ago.
Across from both women a greying and weary accountant stood passively. He observed the young woman’s surpressed disdain for the other. He knew that the older woman would eventually give up the platform shoes for terra firma. He also knew the younger woman would never chew Bubble Yum.
Minnetonkafelix -nice writing! And while I will never own anything made by Burberry, you're right that I won't ever be caught chomping on Bubble Yum. I haven't had the stomach for it since I was 7...
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