The Thinker?

For answers to life’s most enduring mysteries, go shopping.  I have my best, most profound thoughts while trying on clothes in a store’s fitting room — all alone, just me and the mirrors, and clothes,of course,  lots and lots of clothes, different styles, different looks, different sizes!

As many choices, seemingly, as there are stars in the universe….

From the suits the sales associate has left with me, I slip on the cobalt blue, raw-silk skirt.  It fits perfectly.  But the matching jacket is another matter — much too tight around the shoulders!

This happens to me a lot.  For there are no hormone therapies or surgical procedures that can diminish my studly broad shoulders.  When the store offers the jacket and skirt as a pair that cannot be sold separately, the ethical dilemma becomes:

Do I tell the sales associate that I need to mix and match?  Or do I just do it?  (And secretly hope that the next customer will have the opposite problem to mine, namely narrow shoulders and broad hips!)

The disembodied voices coming from the adjacent stalls are of no help.  The chatter belongs to women who have their own consequential choices to make.

It’s dangerous to have too much time to try on clothes.  The temptation is to luxuriate in the possibilities, to experiment with endless looks as if a teenager.  Then the paralysis of perfectionism sets in. Before you know it, the morning’s gone.

But the world has kept on spinning:

There’s news chatter about the U.S. “alienating its European allies,” and I think of ugly clothes that don’t turn heads.

“Actionable intelligence” sounds like a snug micro-miniskirt.

And “the end of history” must mean androgyny and unisex (sooooo boring) fashion.