Not Ready For Prom Time?

Bless ye, oh ye of little knowledge of the commercial world. With the mercury dipping, the flakes flying, and all the secular "Happy Holidays" (w)assailing ye, ye think it's the Christmas season? How so last month of ye. We in retail, the nexus of the American Way of "what have you bought from me lately" Life, while still going through the motions of Happy Holidaying and "would you like that gift-wrapped" and listening to Vince Guaraldi's melancholy "Christmas Time Is Here" for like the millionth time, are already diving into a new cycle of "buy this." You see, in addition to wading through deliveries of kids' Valentine's Day books, today I opened up a box of not one but two (of the half dozen to come, probably tomorrow) special edition Prom magazines. I'm expecting the first crop of fantasy baseball `10 mags Friday, graduation trinkets next week, and back-to-school items by the first. Of January.

Before I can even take ten minutes to push back the holiday retail madness and bask in a few seconds of my own `tis the seasonness, I've got stacks of Seventeen Presents Prom! to deal with. On shelves already overloaded with far too many holiday craft and cooking rags, now I've gotta make room for smiling teens in shoulderless gowns while I'm personally wearing about 17 layers of shirts. Buy for today, buy for tomorrow, and while you're at it, buy for six months from now. Like some tired poor parent, whose credit card is already smoking, needs his or her teen daughter whining in the long checkout line, "Mmmmoooooooooommmmmmm, I neeeeeed this magazine!" It's December 16th, folks, springtime! Get with the program.

Enough. It disgusts me. I'm going out to the garage to work on my golf swing.

Fountains of Wayne-Prom Theme