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As if we aren't self-conscious enough about stepping through the looking glass of marriage and parenthood, occasionally something small occurs to crystallize a reality that we are no longer "cool" in the same way we were in our singleton, mingling days. True, wedded bliss and parenthood bring new joys of a magnitude unimaginable to the skinny-jean-clad twenty-two year-old who just hopped in front of you in line as though you were invisible (or because she was texting furiously and wouldn't have seen you anyway).
Please don't misunderstand. I love skinny jean girl. She reminds me how far I've come and how life gets better with each passing year and how I would rather get a root canal than repeat my twenties and lose the insight I earned in that delicious decade.
Skinny jean girl has so much in store for her. She will read chick-lit on the train on the way to work and have her heart broken and spend too much on shoes and ring up a big ugly credit card bill and have an insane hangover and kill many plants and only buy 4x6 picture frames and have a semi-compromising picture show up on a social networking site and get in a huge fight with her mom and forget to take insurance on the rental car and wear something inappropriate to work and not know which fork to use and put her foot in her mouth and accidentally hit "reply all" and get the same, bad haircut twice, and worship Carrie Bradshaw for all the wrong reasons.
Still, when I received two catalogs from Boden yesterday - the first addressed to my maiden name and the other to my married moniker - I was taken aback. Each featured a different promotion. As a single girl I was offered 15% off, and as a married mama only a random 11%. Apparently the difference between being "young and single" and "aging and hitched" isn't the whole skinny jean thing. The difference, very plainly, is 4%.
At first, I moved to toss both in the trash, along with six J. Crew catalogs offering 20% off my order of $100 or more, with little care as to my name or status. Instead, I reflected on all of the foregoing and felt proud that the richness I've added to my life in just the last three years is far greater than the 4% figure that jumped out at me. I also realize that I'm reading much more deeply into this customer SNAFU than it deserves, but it makes for a decent post.
Alas, I have but two questions: 1) Really? Eleven percent is so random; and 2) What the fuss, Boden?
Jen Freeman
