another post about scarves

Although our travel has been curtailed recently (stupid health issues), I'm still planning the trips we will take when all this nonsense is settled. Reporting the opinion of Specialist B to Specialist A should not be the task of the patient, because the patient, while intelligent and well-educated, is not a doctor. Most recently I complained about side effects from a particular medication, and Brilliant Specialist suggested "we" try another medication which doesn't have those side effects. Although it has its own. I asked how this med is different from the first one, other than the side effects, which sounded exactly the same to me. I was told, it's not, it's exactly the same. So then, what is the point of trying it, I cheerfully inquired. Because, she said, it’s different. Further discussion was frustrating and pointless - the two meds are made of the same ingredients, but they're different. Like Coke and Pepsi, she said. "Um,"said I, "do you mean one contains more sodium than the other and is more heavily marketed in predominantly minority communities?"

I left shaking my head and on the way home it occurred to me that she might have been trying, in an inarticulate kind of way, to tell me that the two substances were isomers.

I’m all for not waiting for rewards for my infrequent episodes of saintly patience - I feel I am entitled to a trip and I am entitled to another scarf.

At the time Himself and I started traveling together, I knew a lot of people who had collections of memorabilia from their travels, which I considered dust-catchers. I would have liked to load up the car trunk with a complete service for 8 (or even 12, that’s how nice girls once bought dishes) from our spur-of-the-moment visit to the Quimper factory but coming home with with a bunch of chipped and shattered dishes didn't appeal. Nor did the cost of the professional shipping recommended by the nice lady at the factory, nor did buying piece by piece of Quimper at New York prices!

So my entire collection of travel souvenirs from that first starry-eyed trip: one Liberty scarf (London), one Hermès scarf (Paris), one box of lovely chocolates which we ate on the plane (Brussels). I bought no dust-catchers, nothing the shipping costs of which were exponentially greater than the cost of a the purchase, nothing that outweighed the luggage ... and nothing that was going to be charged punitive duty. I've stuck with these principles over time, although in the days before iPhones I was not embarrassed to ask a maître d’ for a menu.

Here are my rules for picking a scarf:

1. You must be able to wear it. Are the colors becoming to you? Will it go with at least a few things you already own?

2.  No matter how tempted I am, I never (except for the time I found Les Toits de Paris in palest cream with beige and taupe) buy a scarf with a design that will put white or cream silk against my skin (face, front of neck, back of neck). I don't want stains of makeup or sunblock or perspiration on an investment. If I love the design, I ask if I may see it in another colorway.

3.  A scarf is a really good place to express the Inner You without showing too much skin or wearing head to toe black leather. The Inner Me is an obnoxious little girl who had to learn lots of proverbs and phrases and awkward idiomatic expressions in foreign languages because they would be on exams. Now I'm trying to unlearn them, have been for the past several decades, because they are useless in everyday conversation. You try telling a Frenchman who is getting digressive, "let us return to our sheep." ("Revenons à nos moutons.") Apparently the 17th century comedy from which this adorable expression derives is no longer on the national academic syllabus. But a scarf with little chubby sheep wandering up a mountainside? That speaks to my obnoxious teenage self,

 as does a scarf showing a "Roman" mosaic of a cat and the warning "Cave felem" ("Beware of the cat."). So if you have a thing for monkeys or parrots, have a scarf or two depiecting these creatures.

4.  Beware of counterfeiting. You can find wonderful buys on designer scarves on eBay, but examine the pictures carefully, and be very careful to look at all the pictures. If there’s only one picture, think twice. EBay also has some interesting essays on verification.