Jen Laird White

Last week, while in bed with an odd little virus, I happened upon a commercial that fascinated me.  It came up, I think, between a rerun of “Pretty Woman” and my switching to the Food Channel. (Note:  as you can see, the virus was not necessarily a bad thing.  When was the last time you watched “Pretty Woman”?  It holds up as an excellent tale of the salvation of a hooker with no apparent venereal disease or drug problem and really good hair).  So this commercial features an attractive woman about seventy in line at the supermarket, perfectly turned out, nice gold jewelry, soft sweet face, hair neatly coiffed but there’s something behind her eyes.  They shift nervously from side to side, head tilting awkwardly.  She looks behind her.  She looks forward.  She drums her lovely senior fingers.  Wait, is she shoplifting?  Is she having a seizure?  Something petit mal-ish, nothing with froth? Is she checking out the hot senior fox in the next checkout aisle?  NO, she is dying of embarrassment because she is, yes, purchasing DEPENDS.  Now, it’s not that buying DEPENDS is something I’m looking forward to.  And I’m pretty sure they are somewhere in my future, God willing,  I live long enough.  Incontinence seems to be, yes, sorry to say it, universal after a certain length of life in the land of gravitational pull.  But what followed the lovely Senior in her truly senior moment is an ad for a company that will save the public humiliation of purchasing Depends by delivering them to your home in “plain brown wrapping”.  My god, what a service.  And what a waste.  I can see being embarrassed buying Depends if you’re a twenty something who wears them while getting off on pictures of Pamela Anderson dressed as a nurse?  But if you wet your pants and you’re old then you should be proud of doing something about it rather than just, er, wetting your pants.  But,  okay, so you don’t want the world to know that one good giggle, one really sweet joke will bring on a flood of humiliating proportions, devastating once you can stop laughing.  I understand.  You don’t want the boy at the checkout counter to turn red and avoid your eyes the way he has for your entire life since you were sixteen and bought your first box of Maxi Pads.  Even though he’s now eighty and probably wetting himself too.  Again, total understanding.  But as far as I could tell from the ad, the ONLY thing that they deliver in plain brown wrappers are products for elderly pant wetters.  And I think they are missing the forest for the trees.  Think of the things they could be delivering.  Just from a small business standpoint in this time of economic downturn. Small businesses need to expand and diversify,  and I can only assume that this particular brown paper wrapper business is relatively small given the limited nature of services provided and the very cheap quality of their commercial even though the actress was quite gifted at looking like she might piddle her pants.  So if the plain brown wrapper company were to look to the future with a bold and decisive move and expand their horizons, look beyond the elderly, to oh, say, people my age…which is to say, not quite elderly, how huge could their business be?  The possibilities are endless.  Brown paper wrapped red wine on Friday afternoons.  Bottles of Vodka on really bad days.  Brown paper wrapped Xanax.  Brown paper wrapped syringes filled with botox delivered by doctors dressed as UPS men.  Brown paper wrapped toenail fungus medicine and yeast infection cream and metamucil.  Why not prunes?  Prunes are embarrassing.  Brown paper wrapped therapists, only because they’d probably like being wrapped.  Brown paper wrapped pints of Haagen Dazs and Ben and Jerry’s and extra large Heath bars.  Brown paper wrapped copies of People Magazine and Okay and Lucky and any other literature you hide under couch pillows.  I can’t imagine how they would wrap hot young building contractors or personal trainers but it’s a thought.  You see what I’m getting at.  The possibilities are seemingly endless.  Brown paper wrapped steaks for vegans and beers for teetotalers.  Every Girls Gone Wild movie ever made.  Brown paper.  If you skew slightly younger, you can wrap everything from clothes that you paid too much for and come pre ripped to Jonas Brothers CDs and Proactiv acne medicine.  I’m telling you, I could go on and on.  The Brown Paper Wrapper Company, We’re Sweet and Discreet.  We Wrap It, You Slap it.  We Slink It, You Drink It. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I’m on to something here.  And that way, the Brown Paper Wrap Company can thrive and grow and never, ever  seek  government bailout money.  Although, I suppose that if Depends were the topic of a government hearing, I’d watch.