09.24.04 | 2:43 p.m.

Dipped-licious

I just ate a $4 chocolate-covered strawberry. Can you say, "overpriced?" I can, and it's spelled G-o-d-i-v-a.

The best part about my lunchtime trip to Godiva was watching a BeBe clothing store employee justify to her manager why she went with the green, velour track suit for the storefront window, rather than stick to the black and pink motif.

The employee "was like, yeah! I totally want to bring the green track suit out so that it can be like an accent to the pinks and yet still work with the blacks... so that is what I was thinking."

Then I was like, "I wish I had that job, dressing headless white plaster-cast mannequins and justifying to my boss why they were wearing what they were wearing and what I hoped to achieve with their 'look'" My next thought was something along the lines of, "Oh well, how about a $4 chocolate-covered strawberry! Don't mind if I do."

Speaking of mannequins. I had a traumatic experience with one in my youth.

For reasons that have never been explained to me, when my mother and father moved in together, my father brought with him a female mannequin. My mother, apparently, was okay with this... all the way up until I came along and had been living with the mannequin for a couple years.

One day she must have just up and requested that my father remove the mannequin from the house. But she didn't specify how.*

There I was in my stroller in the middle of the driveway facing my father and his mannequin when she pulled up in her wood-paneled station wagon several hours later. "What are you doing?" My mother asked. "Getting rid of the mannequin," said my father.

I suppose she never thought that he would take a hacksaw to her plastic limbs, and saw her into sections so that she would better fit in the trash can. He then decided to burn the contents of the trash can, because he did not want the trash collectors to see the dismembered female figure and think that he was "sick" or "crazy." [*It seems that issues, such as mannequin disposal preferences, tend not to come up in the first decade of a relationship.] I also suppose this was also one of the rare moments when my mother's motherly instinct kicked in and she thought that maybe having a two-year-old watching her father saw apart a woman and stuff her into a trash can might not be such a good idea.

If my life is ever made into a film, I would very much like that scenario to be the opening scene.