My local mall has one of those big-box lingerie stores in it, along with all the various small ones that so effectively destroy the mystique of women shopping for underwear.  It’s right across from the Shoppers Drug Mart, just so you don’t think all I do is linger outside of skivvies stores, so when I walk by the giant pictures of mostly-nude women, I can’t help but take a look through the door.

It’s post-Valentine’s Day, which means nobody has much reason to spend money unless they really have to.  You could fire a cannon into almost any store in the mall without hitting anyone, and so in desperation, season clearance sales have started popping up all over the place.

It’s no different at the La Vie En Rose superstore, where I saw a bunch of signs hanging from the ceiling, all saying:

GIGANTIC

SALE OF

BRAS

Now, I have one of those imaginations that sees things like that an immediately begins to regress through the thought process that brought us to this point.  It’s like when I was watching A Knight’s Tale and visualizing the thought process that took what was likely a reverent adaptation of Chaucer, all the way to Paul Bettany being the biggest badass of the early English Renaissance.  There are just so many joyous intermediate steps that you can dream up between one and the other, it’s impossible to resist the exercise.

“Gigantic sale of bras” is very much the same kind of thing.  At first it just seems like an awkwardly-phrased sign advocating, well, a wide-scale discount on underwear for your boobs.   But the more you think about it, walking through the mall on your way back to the car, dizzy a little bit from working out after being sick for seven days, the more you can figure up how it ended up that way.

Ad exec 1:  It’s a bra sale!  We’re going to rock the post-Valentine downtime.

Ad exec 2:  No kidding, we’re going to make a fortune.  It’s huge! Gigantic!  It’s a gigantic bra sale!

Ad exec 1:  That’s right, a gigantic bra sal– wait.  We can’t say that.

Ad exec 2:  Why not?  This is a big event, why not?

Ad exec 1:  “Gigantic bra sale.”  We can’t put that on a sign:  It makes it sound like we’re having a sale on gigantic bras. 

Ad exec 2:   … I don’t follow you.

Ad exec 1:  As in, our normal bras are full-price.  But if you’re in the market for a gigantic bra?  This is your weekend!

Ad exec 2:  I still say it’s a gigantic sale.

Ad exec 1:  Fine.  Fine.  Have your way, but one of these days I’m going to find those pictures you took at the Christmas party, and things are going to be different.

Ad exec 2:  Say what you will, we’re still having a gigantic sale of bras.

Okay, so maybe there was a little less blackmail and a little more committee thinking, but you get the idea.