I feel like this bag deserves its own post here on Scathingly Brilliant. If you've been following for a while, you might already know that this bag is the STUFF OF LEGEND. The earliest mention I could find is from 2012, and then I brought it up again in 2013, and once again in 2014. I even talked about it (although it wasn't included in the final copy) in an interview about my Delia's catalog collection just last month. It's been at the top of my ebay wishlist for at least a decade now. I have literally searched some variation of "roxy strawberry bag" every month for years.
It's funny how memories change over time -- I am positive now that I had the bag in high school (I found a photo of me in front of my locker where the straps of the bag are visible. It's like I'm engaging in narcissistic archeology here) but in the past I referred to it as a bag from middle school, and 'circa 1999' (it's more likely 2000-2001.) I mentioned once that I sold it on ebay, but now I think I might have either given it to my grandmom, just lost it entirely, donated it to Goodwill... or sold it on ebay. Who knows.
But regardless of how fuzzy my memories of when and where I had it, the image of the bag itself has always been crystal clear in my mind. And when I typed in "roxy strawberry bag" on ebay last week and saw it show up in the results, I knew immediately I had FINALLY found it again. I don't think I've ever added something to my cart and completed checkout so fast in my entire life.
Getting it in the mail the other day, holding it in my hands again, I immediately flashed back to being ~13, sitting in the passenger seat of my parents' station wagon, Delia's catalog in hand, emphatically making my sales pitch to my dad. We didn't have a ton of money and I didn't beg for pricey items very often, so the ones that I did ask for, the ones that I did get, stand out in my mind: an oversized Adidas coat in 5th grade (I STILL have it and it's STILL my play-in-the-snow coat!); a pair of wide-leg Limited Too jeans in 6th grade; a Roxy shoulder bag with embroidered strawberries from the Delia's catalog.
Things don't matter that much, but memories do. And sometimes the two are so intertwined that the things take on a significance much, much greater than their thingness.
ps. thingness is a word! I thought I was making it up at first but then spell check didn't underline it, and I googled it, and it is a word. You learn something new everyday...
