The other day I was searching my overstuffed closet for a favourite new top when I came across a shirt I’d never seen before. The label was still hanging from the arm. To my horror, I realized I had no idea when I’d ordered it. I’d obviously immediately and carelessly tossed it onto the shelf and promptly forgotten it. I mean - it IS a forgettable shirt, just a plain pale blue tank top. But I couldn’t even think of what had made me get it in the first place.
(The shirt in question)
It was an acute and embarrassing reminder of how far I’d fallen into the alluring traps of online shopping during the pandemic. A habit I am still working to break.
In the depths of the early Covid days, I started what I liked to call ‘sadness shopping’. And there were layers to the sadness. The isolation that drove me to spend so much time online. The guilt of knowing someone was working to get me the items I’d just giddily put in my cart. That someone else was going to deliver them. That I was risking these nameless, faceless but very real people for a very temporary excitement of ordering, anticipating and then receiving a little treat for myself. The letdown that came after opening the boxes, knowing I was still alone and still scared.
When I was a kid, getting something new was rare. You didn’t get a new toy, or book or clothes on a whim. It was a birthday present, or a reward for good grades - or my favourite - new school supplies and back-to-school outfit.
My parents worked hard not to spoil us, but they relaxed a bit during back-to-school season. They probably didn’t understand why my pencil case needed to be a blue and green tartan and not red, and why the next year it had to be a plastic pencil box or all the other kids would make fun of me. Why it was imperative to have a bright orange lunchbox WITH a thermos (never used) that I covered in stickers - but as long as it wasn’t too expensive they typically relented.
These were the things you couldn’t wait to pull out of your knapsack (sometimes worn over both shoulders, sometimes slung coolly over one shoulder with only one strap, guaranteed to make you crooked at the end of the day), and of course, the real showstoppers - the first day of school ensemble.
As the middle child of three girls, getting new clothes didn’t happen often. I’d wear my older sister Michelle’s hand-me-downs, which would be too worn out by the time my younger sister Melanie was ready for them, so she would get something fresh.
As an adult I understand the practicality of it, but as a kid I felt cursed by birth order. I used to browse garage sales and buy myself shirts and shoes with my allowance money. While not technically ‘new’ either, at least it wasn’t a sister who wore them first.
So the back-to-school outfit had outsized importance. I had no sense of ‘style’, but I liked the bold colours, the argyles and paisleys of the late 1980s/early 90s. We looked like kids wearing ugly couch upholstery most of the time, but in the moment, I thought them beautiful.
The year I began grade 3, I walked to my bus stop wearing a maroon/plum matching sweater and pants set. It had abstract art style blocks and stripes, and I was convinced it was the coolest thing I had ever owned. It was my second year at Bayview Glen elementary school, and I was sure I was starting the year off right.
We had moved into a new house the summer before. Ours was one of the first finished, and for a long while there was new construction happening everywhere around us. The bus stop was one street over, at the top of unfinished builds. The ground was cakey and muddy.
As I excitedly waited for the bus, I became aware that I was slowly sinking. Growing up a child of the 80s meant having many fears, like nuclear war, or dying in quicksand. But nobody had ever warned us that mud could be just as entrapping. As I tried to extricate myself, I somehow wedged myself further in. By the time the bus arrived, I was fully stuck.
As the other kids clambered on, I stood there cemented up to my knees in mud. The driver impatiently yelled at me to get on, before realizing I was hysterically crying and blubbering about not being able to move.
He got off the bus, grabbed me under the arms and tried to lift me out. No dice. At this point, I was fully frantic and the driver was getting close. He had a route to follow and a school to get us to, and I’m fairly sure pulling a small child out of the mud was not on the morning’s agenda.
He looked around and found some discarded cardboard from one of the construction sites. Somehow he managed to get the cardboard under me and slowly corkscrewed me out of the mud. There was no time for me to go home and change, so I had to start my first day of school covered in dried dirt, a face full of snotty tears, my beautiful maroon/plum abstract art pantsuit ruined.
I don’t remember as well what happened once I got to school. I’m sure I was scared I would get into trouble when I got home for destroying a new set of clothes. Maybe the kids teased me, but I’m still friends with some of those classmates, all these years later. So if they did, it didn’t cause me any long-term damage. In fairness, I’m sure I created a new opportunity for humiliation by the afternoon.
Sometimes though, when it was late at night, and in my boredom, or maybe just after a long week, I’d start idly browsing eyeglasses sites, or looking at new dresses or hats - maybe even going so far as to add items to my cart - I’d remind myself.
Something ‘new’ used to mean something. It was uncommon, and therefore special. And even that could be easily destroyed, if you’re the kind of girl who gets stuck in mud.
I ask myself now, ‘do I really want this or need this, or am I just chasing the temporary high of ordering something’, and it’s almost always the latter. I’m trying to make newness special again. Just because I can get something, doesn’t mean I should. Because I’m not always going to be rescued by a bus driver.
Great read as alway. We are from the same time and you are right, quicksand did rank high on the list of fears lol.
Ohhh can I relate... when I was about 12 I was crossing the road to catch the bus. Being the preoccupied child I was, I didn't notice that a manure spreader (a larger trailer, towed behind a tractor that has a roll of tines for chucking the manure out the back) had left a trail of fairly fresh manure all over the road. Most of my schoolmates were from town and had no understanding or appreciation of the operation of farm equipment. The usually kind old lady who drove the bus, gave me an earful for tracking a bunch of manure onto her bus, which helpfully drew even more attention to my debacle.
I had been so excited to go to school that day, because the night before I had subbed in goal for my hockey team achieving the one and only W of my minor hockey career. Instead of sharing my triumph, I got to wish I was was invisible 💀