The PANTheon of Bargains

This recession has its benefits. A few days ago, way back in 2008, I learned this first-hand. I am not extravagant. Correction: I am not extravagant when it comes to purchasing, especially clothes, an area where I am puritanically frugal, seeking to ferret out sensational bargains (though prone to wild-abandon impulse buying at inexplicable times), a mercantile abstemiousness exercised not just by me but also imposed on those around me, but I can be recklessly extravagant in the swirl and sprawl of a single sentence, sodden with solipsistic reverie and rollicking verbosity, yet obedient to the rules of grammar, syntax, and style, as with this very example, complete with its own serial comma. Back to the benefits of an economy quieted by its earlier excesses: Ralph Lauren Polo jeans. Black. Originally marked $125. Normally, I would not look at them. In fact, I'd likely rail against their very existence in this space. Marked down to $99.99, now hanging on a 50% off rack. Lord & Taylor's. Then a 20% off coupon. $39.99. $41.59 with tax. Still exorbitant for me, and admittedly I was lured by the dramatic differential from the so-called original price and what I ultimately paid, and aware of the hollowness and trickery of all that. But still. Better than the $12 jeans from Old Navy given me at Christmas, pants that won't be worn by me because, because, there are buttons, buttons! instead of a zipper, on the fly. No way that flies for me, no way. (But on the Polo pants some colorful stitching on the coin pocket: three polo-playing jockeys on well-nigh-flying horses; must be why the pants were so chic. Pedigree. All that.) Bye.