Difficult Music

The belter and I walked and walked and walked today. We walked west on Broadway to London Drugs. We walked to the bank. We walked to Toys R BOW MAC Us, where I saw the fancified modern Big Wheel of my dreams. We also checked out some slot car sets, but none of them were as good as the Aurora AFX "Watkins Glen" track I had when I was 12.

The Barbie aisle featured some kind of sunbathing Barbie with her bikini painted directly on her chest like a Mardi Gras reveller. Aside from all the sartorial harlotry ("Barbie is a virgin, just like Britney Spears," sez the belter), the Barbie train and Barbie plane were pretty cool. On the box for the latter, Barbie's in the cockpit while "flight attendant" Ken doles out the roasted almonds and diet Coke. Heh.

We ended up in Kits, where the belter raided the thrift store and bought more clothes with $25 than I'd thought possible. I had hopes of scoring a sweater, but everything on the racks was misshapen or hideous or had an embroidered golfer prominently displayed on the front. The wardrobe department of The Cosby Show had more tasteful sweaters than this place.

The belter gets so much joy out of thrifting that I want to share some of it with her. I want to score something really nice for 5 bucks, too, but it's hard because I haven't developed an eye for thrifting yet. Also, to generalize a bit, it's more difficult as a guy to find decent clothing in a thrift store. A lot of women rotate their wardrobes as styles shift and as their bodies change over the years. That skirt doesn't fit anymore—off it goes to the thrift store.

I guess men don't do that as much. They just find clothes they like and wear them till till they're worn out. The clothes I saw on Saturday had been dumped in the thrift store because someone had decided they were not suitable to be worn in public. These clothes had never been worn with pride. They were birthday presents from colour-blind aunties.