TOUCH OF MINK

Or Reality Bites

This fine morning those of us fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to go to work had to navigate something that has a very poetic for such a nasty condition thing called wintry mix, otherwise known in New York as wet snow, rain, slush, puddles, extra grumpy people, treacherous sidewalks, clogged drains, and umbrellas sailing half an inch from your eye. Yours truly was one of these fortunate people.

Considering my total lack of proper footwear (another long story), I was very fortunate in a sense that I almost reached my office building without any mishaps; almost, of course, being the operative word. On the corner of my building, waiting for the light to change (I am dorky like that), I was splashed almost literally from head to toe by a passing black Kraut (read fancy) car that seemed to be in extreme hurry. After I regained my equilibrium by denigrating the driver and his ancestry in two languages, all of the sudden I remembered a movie called "That Touch of Mink", after which I dissolved into the uncontrollable giggles.

"Touch of Mink" is an old goofy comedy starring Cary Grant and Doris Day. Its contents are not extremely profound, but quite entertaining, and, considering the subject matter, really clean. The reason I remembered this movie was because Day's character, a clean cut small town girl, gets dowsed with the puddle water in the beginning of the movie by a passing fancy car of the rich businessman played by Grant. What ensues after that is a very entertaining comedy of errors: Day's character gets to spend some time with Grant's, even advise him on important business matter, receives a proposition to be his mistress, gets a wonderful new wardrobe from Bergdorf (completed with mink coat), and gets whisked away to a tropical paradise.

Of course, her small town morals got in the way, and eventually, after some pretty hilarious twists and turns, they got married.

So, for some unexplainable reason, here I am, sitting at my desk in my drying denim skirt, working and contemplating the disparity between Hollywood and reality. As my little friend Goshka said, while sitting on his potty, "Life!"