Monday 1 June 2009

wow

I know this is an old story for some, but others of you may never have heard it, so I'm writing it for you. The rest of you may be excused.

In March of 2007, my daughter Michelle and her husband and brand new baby boy came to visit us in England. In the event you don't want to do the math, Logan was two and Hannah was five during their visit. I, of course, was 34…but that is neither here nor there.

Before they were to leave, we decided to take an overnight trip to London and see the sights the weekend before Michelle and company were to fly back to the States. We did the tourist thing and rode the Big Red Bus, loitered in front of Buckingham Palace in hopes of meeting the queen, stared at the London Eye, waited for Big Ben to chime, and rode past Parliament pointing and snapping pictures.

Of course no tour of London could be complete without going into the city's famous department store, Harrods. The Men Folk took Hannah and escaped to go exploring on their own. Michelle and I took our baby boys and decided to survey the Egyptian Room and see if there was ANYthing we could afford in any of their apparel departments (there wasn’t). As we meandered rather aimlessly through acres of frighteningly overpriced items, we came to the lingerie floor. There was a display of 5 scantily clad female mannequins forming a circle facing outwards. These mannequins were not behind a glass window, but rather in the middle of the wide hallway. Logan was walking at this point and as we all passed the display, Logan strayed behind gaping at the plastic models. I noticed right away he wasn’t keeping up with us and went back to fetch him. As I got closer I heard him say under his breath, “wowww.” Then he walked into the center of the mannequin's circle, carefully appraising their artificial derrieres and uttered again, but this time much more meaningfully, “WOWWW.” We entered the store that proffered this display and I discovered Logan to be deeply appreciative of the aesthetic detail given to each and every lace and gauze covered number. He came across a blond that was reclined in a hammock-like garden swing wearing a filmy little teddy that I certainly would wear if I had a bed swing in my garden. Logan stared intently at this indisputable work of genius before giving a long drawn out, “Woooooooooww.”

Now, I’m guessing he either has an artist's eye, or else he's a perv. Only time will tell.