A Cautionary Tale

"That's SO Last Year's Coach."

I have a relative through marriage who actually makes statements like that. And means it. I may or may not have a Coach bag from several years ago, but I will tell you, I didn't buy it. It was a gift. It's now a gift I pretty much never use. It may or may not be in my closet since my daughter likes to swap bags now and then. It's probably there because it's small and we all know it wouldn't be the right bag for a girl with a fractured sacrum to carry. She should carry the biggest bag she can find and load it up with the heaviest stuff she owns. That's the way you cure a broken back. One of these days, I'm going to go through her bag to see just what's so important that she can't leave behind--even for a few hours.

But, as usual, I digress.

So this relative, several times removed, the one who likes to rag on women for carrying counterfeit, or last year's Coach, is beginning to learn that financial woes can ruin your wardrobe faster than a girl can make snobby statements. She's the same one who told me she didn't deserve breast cancer because she was better at taking care of her body than most. She truly believed that cancer should only happen to people who asked for it, not for those who stayed uber-skinny, worked out every single day and took their overpriced designer multivitamins religiously. I've never had a conversation with this woman when she didn't find a way to make someone feel bad about themselves while elevating herself on a pedestal.

About two years ago, she got a bug to buy a new home. Not just any new home, either, it was a million dollar home in the zip code she desired. She went and looked at it, and being the wise financial genius that she likes to think she is, she waited. She heard through the grapevine that the owners had lost their high paying jobs and were desperate. When she'd first begun her search, the home was listed for 1.2 million dollars. Each month she waited, the asking price dropped 10 percent. When it became clear that the owners were in utter dire straits, she offered $600,000 and proceeded to gloat. Her patience had paid off and she had her chi-chi home, clearly at the expense of someone's misfortune. Interestingly, when she had to sell her first home, she wouldn't do it because she couldn't get a good enough price for it. She was offered what she'd paid for it, but there was no way it was worth only that in her mind, otherwise, why would she have lived in it for so long. She hung onto it and used it to house her less than fortunate relatives. A very magnanimous woman, wouldn't you say?

Failing to learn from the cancer episode, she clung to her misguided belief that bad things could never happen to her because she does everything perfectly. She considered herself above the financial devastation that had struck metropolitan Detroit and continued to spend like a drunken sailor who only hits port once in a blue moon. Although her new digs were perfect, she hired a decorator and dropped another $150,000 into remodeling a perfectly good mansion. Then tragedy struck. Her husband's business started to fail. Their savings, all in the stock market, disappeared overnight. Despite how wonderful she is, her husband found another woman to give him comfort and has moved in with her.

Just desserts? Probably so. I don't ordinarily find humor in the misfortune of others, but in her's, I admit I do. Hey! I'm not perfect and never said I was. If I were Catholic, I'd have to go to confession every single day just to admit how much I've enjoyed her karmic comeuppance. Over the past year, this woman has said and done the most hurtful things to my daughter. I've wanted to call her so many times to let her know how I really feel, but my best friend and my daughter have vetoed this idea. To still my fingers from dialing, I decided to put her business out there for the rest of the world to see.

I can't wait to bump into her and see her wearing last year's Coach.

So sue me.