Author: Sarah Barker

About seventy-five people who had not won the lottery waited outside the Department Store Formerly Known as Dayton’s at Rosedale Center. The manager of the store talked into a microphone that rendered his voice unintelligible, then some instigators tried to incite the crowd with a rousing countdown. After a lackluster “ … two, one,” the…

Shopping is supposed to be about getting stuff and the resultant happy glow of ownership. Yet how did it come to be that retail, as we know it today, is based around wanting but not necessarily getting? While it’s counterintuitive, it does explain the stacks of miserable, desperate-looking people at the mall. Jeans, perfume, boobs—there…

The Chinese have been using acupuncture for cosmetic purposes for centuries; while here, in the medically advanced West, we like to suffer for our beauty by winching away the years or injecting our faces with bovine toxin. But these methods give some people pause, especially when they can no longer even furrow their brows to…

It has come to my attention that I’m a messy eater, which wouldn’t be such a problem were I not so often clothed at the scene of the crime. Properly seated at a dining table, kitted out with a shroud-sized napkin, seltzer water, and an array of absorbent paper products, I can confidently churn through…

When we were all younger and firmer, my husband was a competitive runner and our daughters were Dad groupies. Upon returning from the crusades, battle scarred and sweaty, the girls would surround him, hopping around with Barbies in their fists and shrieking, “Did you win Dad, did you win?” The situation was such that sometimes…

I’m missing something. Not like glasses or dignity, things easily mislaid. No, it’s something essential, like a helix of DNA that should have come matched with my two X chromosomes. It’s the handbag gene. I exhibit other double-X-linked traits. For example, I’m exquisitely literate in clothing and shoes. I can identify a handmade buttonhole on…