Charmed

I wasn't sure what to get my mother for Mother's Day, so I texted my sister to see what she was doing. She said she was getting her a charm for this bracelet she'd gotten a couple of years ago. It's an easy and reasonably-priced gift, one we've chosen in the past, so I figured we would get her one too.

The company that makes these bracelets and charms is called Pandora (not to be confused with the internet-radio site, which I bet the jewelers wish didn't exist, because it means they can't have the pandora.com URL). The charms and bracelets are threaded, which makes them easy to add and rearrange. They are carried by a number of jewelry stores, and they now have a couple of free-standing stores as well. So after looking at their web site to get an idea of what we thought my mother would like, we set off for the mall on Saturday to get a charm.

We got to the mall around 6:30 PM and spent a few minutes looking at jewelry in Nordstrom before heading out into the mall. The Pandora store is located just outside the Nordstrom in this particular mall, and as we walked across the area just outside the store, we could see that there was a line of people waiting to get into the Pandora store. It stretched down a side corridor and was about 30 people long. (Someone in Nordstrom told me there had been a line on Friday as well.)

I know it was the last minute, but I still had no idea these things were so popular. We had been in this store once or twice before, and I had purchased a charm for my mother for Christmas, but I had gone to the store in the Prudential Center on my way home from work, and had done it at least a couple of weeks before the holiday. Apparently charm bracelets are a big deal for those of the mom persuasion.

My first inclination was to come back later, but the Mrs. went and stationed herself in the line right away, so I figured I had no choice but to join her, seeing as it was my mother we were shopping for. Clerks from the store were walking along the line, passing out catalogs so those waiting could decide, or at least narrow down their choices. There was a lot of cell phone activity as people called spouses and siblings to discuss which charms to get.

The Mrs. buttonholed one of the clerks and he confirmed that the style we wanted was in stock, so at least we knew we weren't wasting our time waiting. Once we made it around the corner and into the store, it didn't take long to make our selection and finalize the purchase, but in all it had taken about 45 minutes from the time we got in line. But hey, Mother's Day is only once a year, and mom is worth at least that much time.