My first job was at a bookstore in a strip mall of local shops - the hobby shop, the coffee shop, the bike shop, the greek-owned diner, the drugstore. For such a piece of trash town, that strip of stores was pretty damn cute. In addition to books, we also had amazing greeting cards and an entire wall of stickers. A WALL.OF.STICKERS! That place was all the rage, all across the land, because of those spools and spools of stickers.
Cute little girls loved ‘em and so did dads that wanted gift wrapped books with stickers all over the place. For some strange reason, stickers also attracted The Purple Lady.
The Purple Lady was in her mid-late 50s. Drove a purple car. Had purple painted nails, wore a purple moo moo, signed her purple checks with her purple pen and dyed her yappy poodle purple. Yeah. She had a damn purple dog. She only bought cards with purple flowers, accompanied by purple envelopes and adorned them with purple stickers. Oh, and then she bought some classy romance novels with purple covers. Of course. I mean, the lady was nice enough but clearly the elevator did NOT go to the top floor.
Many years after I left the titillating job of selling romance novels to desperate housewives and monitoring the kids flipping through the Joy of Sex, I came upon The Purple Lady’s house. Yup, you could just imagine what it looked like. I knew it was her house the minute I saw it. Once I saw her purple cadillac out front of THE.PURPLE.HOUSE, I screamed, “OH MY GAWD, THE PURPLE LADY!!” Clearly my friend thought my elevator didn’t go all the way to the top and then I told my story.
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Every Tuesday and Thursday I now sit 3 stools away from a new purple lady in my life. This one is almost 60 years old and black, but HO.LY.SHIT does she have purple nails and purple lined paper and a purple pen. Aaaaand, purple died hair and a purple purse and a pretty amazing Stevie Nicks inspired purple caftan.
What the HELL, people? Does anyone else know a purple lady? Please tell me I’m not the common denominator here!
