No longer content with confining her to the second row, behind a cheese magazine but still before a gluten-free cooking magazine, they have dropped her down, down, down. .. below Food & Wine. Below Cooking with Paula Deen. Below The Knot and Architectural Digest.
No more for Sandra the middle shelf where you put the magazines that will catch people's eyes, the ones people will buy even though they didn't come in to buy a magazine, they just came for some spinach and enough milk to hold them through to the weekend. Not the shelf for magazines that offer something -- a recipe, a dress, a plan for weight loss or tips for hotter sex -- that will arrest the casual shopper, will give them something to want, something to aspire to. No, nor even the shelf above that, where you might find the Muscle & Fitness they were out of at CVS, or the Celebrity Hair you want to take to your stylist to see if he thinks you could pull off Emma Watson's adorable pixie cut. 
No, Sandra. You must go to the bottom shelf. The shelf where only the die hards will look, because you have to crouch in an unflattering position, sinking your haunches low to the ground until they hover mere centimetres above the linoleum floor that God-knows-who has done God-knows what on. The shelf where even those who might want your magazine and who will see your bleached brow beaming sunnily above the top of a bulk order of The Nest will hesitate, will think about reaching down to see if you're worth buying this month, and will ultimately say "ah, fuck it," because if they get down there, their joints will snap and crackle and pop, betraying their age to anyone who might be at the Safeway on their lunch hour (including, but not limited to the creepy guy who runs the wine section and that weird girl with the pink shoes and the Body Shop totebag who is taking pictures of the magazine rack with her phone). The second row of the lowest shelf, Sandra. That's where you are now. That's where you will finish out your days. Two sad copies, tucked away behind a mountain of a magazine featuring that woman from Glee whose eyes always make me wonder if she has a thyroid problem.
Unseen. Out of reach. Ultimately, unsold.
3 comments:
AWWW! Behind Knitting and Shutterbug---both of which have a very nichey audience, but still ahead of Crafts and Farmers' Almanac. There's that.
I've never bought the magazine, but I DO TIVO S-H. I love the simple, uninvolving soliloquies and the calming colors, and the plot always turns out well.
She BRIGHTS me, and that's a good thing during these dark months. So jeer. I yam what I yam.
rachel
racheld: I don't know that I've ever seen brights used as a verb before. Kudos.
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