Sale

This four-letter word has pushed me into a quagmire (and all its synonyms) again and again over the years. But I keep falling for it.

Discount: 50% to 70% today only. Buy-one-take-one.  Closing-out sale. Buy any three for only P1,000. Additional 10% discount to Visa card holder.   

Do you find these irresistible?  I do, said in a coy whisper. 

I also get weak-kneed on all their derivatives. So in an act of rare courage, I now say to myself: I am a disgrace.   

I’m on my teaching summer break and in between books; I try to catch up on what I have not caught up on—my cabinets and drawers.

I discover these clothes still with price tags and I try them on. Not one fits. It is either too loose, too long, too tight, too short, too-anything.

What are they doing in my closet?! 

They were on sale—ON SALE—and came only in those sizes and conditions. I had in mind, at the time of ecstatic-frenetic buying, to alter them (I was a seamstress in my other life, and a seamstress in my future life), but that thought remained a thought.  An author’s brain has two doors: one is a freezer and that’s where those on-sale-thingies-to-be-altered got stored. 

I vow to work on them so they would finally fit my non-haute-couture size before classes begin in June, and during brief gaps in my writing and speaking blitzes these two months. Whether I will be successful is another story. 

Well, hope—like grace—springs eternal.

I would have ended this blog with that resolute statement, but a friend just called and gushed, “There is a sale at Alabang Town Center!”  

Dot, dot, dot.