The Jeweled Jaybird

Where were you when I needed you? When we were young moms and attended regional or national church events, and a kid missed the corn dog with the mustard pack, but nailed the chest area of your best dress, you just dealt with it. You just carried your purse a little higher and more dead center the rest of the day as if that were a normal thing. It was good for the triceps muscles. 

We didn’t have The Jeweled Jaybird back then. This pop up store makes an appearance, as it takes up half of a gym floor at every church event these days. You get a mustard stain now, you just go buy a dress in the middle of Mercantile Row. 

I don’t know what kind of vendor rent they’re paying, but with the shopping frenzy that goes on every single time, it’s gotta be a sweet deal for them. I’m just wondering when they’ll have to start paying rent for the women’s bathrooms, too. I mean, if you’ve got legitimate bladder pressure instead of just pressure from your friends to get the teal dress or the sage one, you might be in trouble. 

Every stall becomes a makeshift dressing room. It looks like a fabric store blew up over every stall door, and people waltz in and out of each one like Barbie and Skipper competing at the Malibu clothes-changing quarterfinals. You hear every phrase in there except pass the toilet paper.

Them: Tell me the truth. What do you think?

Me: I think I should probably just use the bathrooms in the backstage hallway.

Them: There’s just a lot going on here around the neckline.

Me: There’s a lot going on in here period!

Them: I’ve already spent too much anyway, so I’m just going to buy the cranberry dress too. Once you’ve already spent too much, you can’t get out of being in the overspent category anyway, so just enjoy it. Go for broke.

Me: I was just going for slightly blemished, but if I don’t get in a bathroom door … 

Them: Hmmm, the back just doesn’t hang right.

Me: It looks great. Buy it. Don’t spend another second. It’s you.

Them: Go get me the flowered one.

And even though there’s a mirror the size of China in that bathroom, they still decide to go get a friend’s opinion, so people are walking the halls of this grand convention center with sales tags sticking up their necks looking for someone to tell them it makes them look young and sophisticated.

I even heard one woman go out and ask her husband what he thought. Most of us avoid that like a case of Shingles. He frowned and said, “that’s not you.” That’s probably because he could see the tag sticking up her neck, and he was thinking in his head that if he spends forty-two dollars today, it better be on a really good tackle box. He was also on the hotel floor at this point propped against a Corinthian column, and I wondered how many rounds of dress-up he had already survived. 

It’s a pretty good gig, and I do think they have some cool pieces in fun shades. But here’s the deal: Are the ladies really wanting to arrive at lectures, classes, teen event competitions, in the same outfit? Because that’s what happens. I saw the same fuschia dress 98 times. And we were only at the convention three days. 

I was feeling a little left out, me over here in a denim jacket over a bland navy tunic with only one ruffle. I brought it from home. It never even occurred to me you dress as you go, and that there was going to be a way bigger mixer going on in the bathroom than the meet-and-greet reception I was planning  to attend in the ballroom. 

My dress didn’t even have a name like Grape Giraffe-Latte or Pale Beaded Sackcloth Memory. It was just a dress. Just a go-to-the-mall-alone-and-leave-with-

a-sack-and-receipt kind of dress. No giant rick-rack or general bedspread trim anywhere.

What a nerd I’ve turned out to be. I probably ought to get out of the convention rooms where the scheduled events are going on more often, and live it up in the clothing racks. LIfe is short.

And so is this Mocha Savvy Flare Elk. Do you think it would work with the Moss Swamp leggings?