Observation 9: Coffee shop jungle

Is it just me, or as we get older do we become less self aware? For me, this has led to two tragic developments—I’m becoming a worse driver and an illogical dresser. Case in point, my ability to walk into the coffee shop where I’m sitting at this moment with the tags from my new jeans still blatantly attached, similar to the way boys wore tags on their hats when I was in high school. But I think they did that on purpose.

I’d like to tell you that this is the only time it’s happened. In fact, I’m constantly turning up places with hems unraveling, sweaters inside out, the stitching that you’re supposed to take out of skirt slits still in place. And I think, "It wasn’t always this way. I think I used to show up places looking relatively polished. I would lay outfits out; I would iron."

Here’s an even more disturbing trend—I can’t figure out if things match anymore. This is girldom at its most basic, something you learn along with tying your shoes—what colors, textures, styles, and shoes go with what. Some mornings I’m dashing through the kitchen to grab coffee when my husband gives me a funny look that says, “ummm, there’s something wrong there.”

Up until now, I’ve been one to ungenerously look at an older woman in line at the grocery store or at a town meeting, and wonder what she could have been thinking when she pulled on fuchsia stirrup pants and a disheveled polka dot sweater. Now, I realize that there was no thought process at all. All she was thinking was that the internet is down, she’s supposed to have weeded the front garden today, there’s nothing for dinner and she’ll just pop out for 20 minutes to post something to the web before she zips home. She arrives at her internet cafe and a nice guy with several studs in his face whispers out the side of his mouth rather purposefully, “Look at your left leg. The tag, the tag!”

It's not so much that I'm a fashion victim, rather the New Girl can see fashion leaving her behind, like a bus slowly pulling away from the stop. Really, people should just be thankful that we show up with clothes on and with four wheels on the ground. What more do they want?