One of the things I remember wanting most clearly was a Mrs. Prindable's Apple. My mom was a single mom, and while I never went without the things I needed, we weren't a monetarily comfortable little unit by any stretch of even the most outlandish imagination. Even so, every year around Christmas time, my mom would take me to the mall, and I got to go to all of the nice stores, where the wealthy people shopped on the regular (I assumed). For a few weeks every year, I got to pretend I was one of them. I have no idea why Dillards and Neiman Marcus were even on my mom's hit list, thinking back on it. Maybe it was her own little treat, mingling among the departments with the ease of someone who belongs. I'd like to contend that everyone in Neiman Marcus is just like my mother, because surely that place is bullshit to everyone else, as well. I'm getting away from myself, though.
There used to be a section at the back of our mall's Neiman Marcus that was nothing but edible treats. The displays were full of Godiva Chocolates, the gorgeous Bavarian Truffles shaped like seashells, and one year, there were hedgehog chocolates from some exotic sounding place, but I can't recall where it was. They each had a red ribbon tied around their hollow chocolate necks, and even as a child that wanted to touch everything in the world, those red ribbons were more sacred to me than anything else. I never dared touch them, though they looked so wonderfully soft.
On a glass table in the middle of this rich and luxurious smelling paradise sat the display of Mrs. Prindable's Apples. And these, my friends, represented nirvana to my whirring brain. For whatever reason, those apples were a thing of rare beauty to me...a symbol of status that I longed for every day of the year. To be so wealthy as to be able to eat a decadent apple like it was no big deal, or no special occasion? That was how I saw the rich. Scores of Mrs. Prindable's wrappers smooshed in a garbage, while someone in a mink coat and feathered shoes (don't even ask why) laid about with all the grace of an oil painting, feeding themselves slice after beautiful slice of candied and decorated apple.
How desperately I wanted an apple like that of my own. I asked for one every single year. I just wanted to put my lips to those beautiful confections and pretend for however many divine moments it took me to eat the apple in its entirety that I was among the world's elite.
I never did get a Mrs. Prindable's Apple for Christmas. When I stood around the spotless glass table at Neiman Marcus, coveting and wishing so hard to receive one that I looked like I was committing a hate crime against that table, my mother would grab my hand and drag me away toward the lame, over priced, and distinctly inedible Christmas tree decorations, telling me all the while that those apples are terribly bad for me, do I really want to eat something that will make my teeth fall out and make me fat?
Uh, fuck yeah I do.
For whatever reason, I've never bought a Mrs. Prindable's Apple for myself. I'm not sure I can stand the idea of taking it away as a status symbol from the younger, less cynical, version of myself. I am not wealthy (though I am far from being anywhere near as poor as my mother and I were when I was growing up. Settlement not included, my husband and I are doing pretty fucking alright for ourselves. Definitely well enough to buy several Mrs. Prindable's a month, however absurd and ungodly the prices are. And they are), and while buying one of those apples may fulfill a fucking weirdo lifelong dream of mine, I do not yet have the mink coat, nor the feathered heels, that would allow me to rip that picture of frivolous wealth away from myself with the pomp and circumstance such an occasion would deserve.
