By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

“They have your wallet over at The Mansion [Diner],” said my doorman last Monday morning.
He was referring to my new, blue, rectangular Michael Kors wallet that holds my life and that I thought I’d never see again.

The previous Saturday I had run errands, traveling light with only what I could fit in my pockets: my iPhone and trusty MK.

Earbuds in place, I powerwalked across 86th Street to the sound of my iTunes library.  Due to technical difficulties, I needed both hands to fiddle with the iPhone. So preoccupied did I become with my music that it took me a minute to acknowledge that my purse was sliding out of my coat.

I ripped my earbuds from their sockets and turned quickly, expecting to find it on the ground. It was nowhere. This is what baffled me: How could it not be on the sidewalk? It had fallen only seconds earlier.

I retraced my steps from the 86th Street side of The Viand Diner to Second Avenue in front of The Heidelberg. I went there and back at least 10 times, then along the whole stretch of 86th Street from First to Second. Nothing.

How could it disappear so fast? I couldn’t understand, unless someone hot on my heels had seen it drop and picked it up. “I think you got your pocket picked,” my husband, Neil, surmised. Either way, my stuff was gone.

Luckily, I’d made copies of the wallet’s contents so I knew what I was missing. I called credit card companies and the bank, as well as the credit monitors—Equifax, Experian and TransUnion—who help prevent identity theft. (FYI: Reporting to Equifax is enough, as they alert the other two.)

With this behind me, I had the rest of Saturday and Sunday to wait out so I could take care of the rest on Monday: Social Security card replacement and a new driver’s license. Plus the less crucial replacement of museum membership and library cards, et al. I suddenly went into mourning for my Duane Reade FlexRewards card.

Sunday afternoon, I took the advice of some credit card reps and reported the loss at my police precinct.
Even though I knew they wouldn’t dispatch the SWAT team in search of my possessions, it seemed like a good idea to have a record of the incident.

I’d never been inside a station house. I found two officers behind a rather tall desk. My neck started hurting from looking up to tell my tale of woe. I filled out a multipage form, then the officer had to copy what I wrote on to his own report, plus write down my story of what had happened. This took forever.

Sunday night I didn’t sleep, too anxious waiting to begin my rounds of calls, voice recordings and the dreaded trip to the DMV and Social Security office.

But the next morning, my doorman let me know a man had found my wallet. He had come by around midnight on his way to work his overnight shift. There was some mixup with the night doorman, who wasn’t sure if he should buzz up so late. The man said he’d come back before he went home at 8 a.m., but I couldn’t wait and ran over to the diner.

Everything was inside MK, except my money and MetroCard. (Note to whomever has both: Hope you are someone who truly needed them. Enjoy.  And thanks for ditching the rest.)

Of course, the big shout-out belongs to the man who returned my “life.” I always like to believe I can count on my fellow New Yorkers, and this one proved me right by working overtime.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

Welcome to your first week of change.

Five days ago, you most likely made a resolution involving one of the big three. With any luck, your agreement with yourself to exercise more, weigh less (always No. 1 on my hit parade) or stop smoking and/or imbibing will last out the week.

It’s easy to blame New York City for one’s inability to stay on track—too many restaurants serving too-large portions, not enough time to get to the gym, job too stressful (or no job at all) to go without a cig or drink.

But what if you’re a thin non-smoker/drinker who hits the Equinox treadmill at least three times a week, yet still feel stuck in a “same $?&! different day” mindset? First you need to figure out what your (less than obvious) addiction is.

According to Unhooked: How to Quit Anything by Dr. Frederick Woolverton, a psychologist and addiction specialist in Greenwich Village, and Susan Shapiro, an author, journalist and professor at NYU and The New School, “Addiction is a compulsive reliance on any substance or activity that…is used to alternate emotional states that would otherwise feel intolerable if one did not use.”

Can you not start your morning without a jolt of Joe? Do you check your cell with the frequency and urgency of someone on Obama’s call sheet? Has your workout routine become compulsive (an example of how something healthy can take a turn for the unhealthy)?

What gives Unhooked its credibility is that in it, both authors share their personal stories of addiction and how they used the techniques they write about to unhook themselves. Shapiro, a one-time patient of her co-author, admits to being addicted to book deals (aside from this latest one, she’s published five memoirs and two novels in eight years). Before her career could consume her, she cut back on freelance to do charity work. Most the stories, however, are case studies of Woolverton’s very relatable patients.

Psychobabble-free, Unhooked offers compassionate and common-sense advice. If you’re trying to drop a few pounds, stay out of the bakery. Want to beat gambling? Stop hanging out with those who are “in it to win it.” Then there’s my favorite: Have a get-away excuse at the ready in case you find yourself in the company of people unsupportive of your new lifestyle choice.

Might I add that, for all its major temptations, Manhattan also has a wealth of ways to help yourself: therapists, 12-step programs, hotlines, volunteer opportunities—help yourself by helping others—and classes to redirect your energies, as well as service providers like personal trainers.

There are also some things you can do on your own. Switch from coffee to tea; you may meet a handsome Earl Grey-er. Set the alarm on your cell so you only look at it every 15 minutes. And exchange one of those exercise classes for another that lets you pursue a new interest—ceramics, anyone?

The book also addresses why people relapse, which boils down to never really getting to the bottom of what hole your habit is trying to fill. Woolverton says that after some success staying clean, people will test themselves, wanting to believe they’re in control and can have “just one.” They would probably have better success passing an exam in high school French.

So before you sit down to your nightly, mesmerizing six-hour Facebook routine, decide to make it only three and use the rest of the time to write in a journal, rearrange a closet or read a book (like Unhooked), because nothing will change unless you change something.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

Every year, just being able to say that I live in Manhattan is my best Christmas gift. I love it here because I never know what’s going to happen next.

Judging from the events of 2011, our borough has proven once again to be a place of ups and downs, joys and disappointments, contradictions and consistencies.

Who needed Hurricane Irene, which tore through New York in August, to stir things up? There’s never a dull moment here, especially when it comes to:

Jobs

• Aside from our unfortunate colleagues who have been downsized, there were some high-profile career enders. Cathie Black (remember her?) was schools chancellor for what, five minutes, until someone realized that her magazine world skills were not transferable.

• Then there was Anthony Weiner, who tweeted himself out of work.

• Eliot Spitzer’s TV show got cancelled. (Yet Ashley Dupre still writes for the New York Post.)

• We became preoccupied with Occupy Wall Street and their rage against the machine of those 1 percenters, who are rich and horrible until they offer you a job, as one firm did to Zuccotti Park protestor Tracy Postert.

• But not everyone had a bad time with their 9-to-5s: Andrew Cuomo started a new job and Yankee Derek Jeter reached his 3,000th hit.

Celebrities

• Unless you’re an American Airlines flight attendant or a Starbucks barista whose face he’s screamed in, one-time Upper West Side (now Soho) resident Alec Baldwin seems to still be considered by many people—especially those on Saturday Night Live—as handsome, charming and funny.

• Once again, the Kardashians came to “take New York”—then they went, thank goodness.

• Along with everything else, Bernie Madoff lost his son. Luckily, not one but two books came out to chronicle what it was like to be a member of that family. (I think we’ve all got it by now: it was great when they were living large off OPM and sucked when it disappeared because their father was a crook.)

• We said goodbye (and good riddance?) to “housewives” Jill, Alex (and Simon), Cindy and Kelly. Let’s hope the new batch brings a little dignity with them.

• And in the category of local girls make good, a once-bullied outcast, Lady Gaga, gave us the holiday windows at Barneys and Ivanka Trump had a baby (aka the heiress to the throne) and filled the fashion world’s accessory void by launching a line of bags and shoes to go with her jewelry.

Society at Large

• Citizens gathered at ground zero to celebrate after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden; months later, they returned to mourn those we lost tragically 10 years ago.

• After much debate, New York State approved gay marriage, making many long-time same-sex couples very happy—as well as caterers, designers and other wedding industry vendors.

• Target shoppers proved moderately priced Missoni can turn otherwise sophisticated women into an angry, greedy mob. (The Versace event at H&M was a tad more civilized.)

• The Second Avenue Subway and the East 91st Street Marine Transfer Station continue to vie for the title of “Bane of Our Existence.”

• And, as if Grand Central wasn’t crowded enough, Apple opened its fifth New York location there. It’s an iMac, iPhone, iPad, iPod city; we just live in it.

I plan to savor the last week of the year (in New York City, any number of things can happen in seven days.) Even though I can’t see the future, I can tell you that, as always, there’ll be more to surprise us in 2012.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

Just when I thought I’d be turning in a column about the nadir of entertainment, Kourtney & Kim Take Manhattan (10 p.m., Sundays on E!), I channel surfed my way to finding “the Biebs” rockin’ out on NBC with Rockefeller Center as his stage.“Everybody come in here so we can watch this together.”

“What is…? Is that Justin Bieb…? I’m not looking at this,” said my almost 17-year-old son, Luke. “If he went to my [all boys] school, he’d get beat up.”

“Sit down,” I ordered, “we’re watching this as a family.”

He plopped on the floor across the room. This allowed him to both fulfill my directive, yet satisfy his own desire not to participate in anything Bieber-related. My husband, Neil, and soon-to-be 14-year-old daughter, Meg, joined us in the living room at the same time; Meg entered screaming at the sight of you know who.

Neil sat between Meg and I on the sofa with the caveat that he would only stay if she stopped the yelling, which was blending in quite harmoniously with the teen girls in the live audience who were holding up their backlit iPhones, not only to take video of the matinee idol, but to wave the way Neil and I once did with Bic lighters during concerts at Madison Square Garden.

“Now, who is this?” Neil wanted to know.

“Justin Bieber,” Meg said in that “Oh Dad, why don’t you know anything?” way.

Neil turned to me, “That’s that YouTube kid, right?” (He means well, really. It’s just Neil has no patience/interest in pop culture.)

“Yes.”

By now Biebs was singing “The Christmas Song” (“chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”) as a duet. “Who’s this other guy?” said Neil.

“Usher,” Meg and I answered at the same time.

“Who’s…” Neil started to ask, but was cut off by Luke’s hysterical laughter.

“He’s a singer,” informed Meg. “He’s famous, and was the one who discovered Justin.”

“So, this is who we have to thank.”

More laughter from Luke.

Meg began instructing all to be quiet as to hear the song that was now over.

“So, why are we watching this?” Neil inquired.

“They’re lighting the tree at Rockefeller Center,” I sighed.

“Are they going to get to it any time soon?”

I told him that first people would be performing Christmas songs. “It’s festive. We’ll get in the spirit.”

The “spirit” didn’t last long. We lost Luke after the video premiere of a post-Jenny Craig Mariah Carey singing her remix of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” with, yes, Justin Bieber. (It was just too much for my son.)

Meg, Neil and I made it through Tony Bennett and Neil Diamond, which gave Meg her turn to ask, “Who is this?” She retired to her room.

Neil watched one more act then declared, “Well, I’ve had enough.”

I wanted to work myself up into a frothy lather over our lack of holiday kick-off fun, but quite frankly I had grown disenchanted myself.

Later, I reminded all that the coming Sunday was the Holiday Open House at The New York Public Library on 42nd Street. “Afterwards,” I suggested, “we can walk through Bryant Park and look in the shops and watch the skaters.”

As though the whole Bieber-filled TV show extravaganza/debacle had never happened, Neil added, “And then maybe we can head up to Rockefeller Center and see the tree.”
I think we’ll fare a little—let’s make that a lot—better in person.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

Dear OWS,

You are not the only ones who are part of the 99 percent. How do you expect the rest of us non-1-percenters to support you if your actions are hurting us?

I was with you (figuratively, not literally) in the beginning. I believe in our rights to rise up and congregate to show our elected officials the number of citizens who are tired of being jobless with no prospects on the horizon; to express resentment that, while many watch their unemployment run out, others are cashing bonus checks—we’re all suffering from bailout burnout.

I never thought I’d ever agree with anything said by Eliot Spitzer, but in the Oct. 21 issue of New York Magazine, he gave an interview that echoed exactly how I felt. “If [the protesters] are down in Zuccotti Park six months from now…Trust me, the media won’t be paying as much attention if it’s just the same couple hundred people. Just as with a chess game, there’s got to be a next move.”

Like him, and like everyone else, quite frankly, I have been waiting for that move. But you just parked yourself in the park.

I couldn’t help but begin to resent the disservice you’ve done to our city, which former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani spent so much effort cleaning up. Manhattan depends on tourism. How many have been scared away by anticipated violence?

I realize many of you have no jobs, but is your goal really to make sure anyone who is employed joins you on the unemployment line?

And then there are the lives of those who live in the neighborhood that have been disrupted, as well as the commuters whose way you’re in.

FYI: A Lower Manhattan-destined field trip at my daughter’s school was cancelled. What did a bunch of 7th graders ever do to you?

You know who else is part of the 99 percent? The police. They are doing their jobs when they clear you out or move you along via orders from the mayor. BTW: Did no one ever tell you that they carry guns, billy clubs and handcuffs, and that they will arrest you—and fight back—if you raise your hand to them?

Your two months of protest seems like two decades in a city that measures time in New York minutes. Sometimes I get so frustrated with all of you; I just want to say, “Get a job.” But I guess if you could, you wouldn’t be out there in the first place.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

When all else fails, throw mom under the bus.

In a rash of recent articles in the New York Post, New York magazine and the Wall Street Journal, to name a few, company owners and independent recruiters are declaring our young “unhirable” because their moms took care of them, resulting in a sense of entitlement.

It seems we coddled them by using the much maligned compliment “Good job” when they were 2 and put a book back on a shelf. Because of this infraction, they now have a dreaded case of self-esteem, which people say you should have but are so intimidated by when it is displayed.

We aided and abetted in the travesty that allows all of the 9-year-olds in Little League to garner a trophy—not for winning, but for showing up (what Woody Allen said 90 percent of life is) and participating. One would think an employer would find this training to be a positive, as in: Our kids will show up for work.

We were being “helicopters” when we thought—mistakenly—that we were simply taking care of our kids by showing an interest in their day-to-day lives; attending class trips, recitals, plays and games. We realize now that we were only fostering this whole ugly self-worth business.

And what were we thinking with the over-scheduling? (We actually considered it introducing our children to as many interests as possible so they could become well-rounded.) We figured this would come in handy one day when they went on interviews (for schools or jobs) and the request was made: “Tell me about yourself.” Our children would be looked upon favorably as they spoke of the instrument they played or sport they excelled in, as well as the traveling they had done. Wrong again.

What is conveniently overlooked is that not only did our kids’ mothers take care of them, we also showed them how to take care of themselves. And the “everybody gets a trophy” thing falls by the wayside around high school, when not only do most kids fail to get a prize, many don’t even make the team. They also must compete to get into high school and college. Yes, there are “legacies” and those whose place in the Ivies was secured by a grandfather who put a new wing on a library, but most just take the SAT and cross their fingers. Sometimes Plan B is the closest they get to their original dream. They are well aware that they are not entitled.

So let’s turn that 9.1 percent unemployment finger around on the people who do the hiring in our no longer jobless nation, where there seem to be many positions to fill. Apparently, they just don’t hire and then pretend it’s because there are no qualified candidates.

In a good economy, those who have the power to give someone their livelihood feel pretty heady. In a bad economy, the arrogance of those in the position to hire is off the charts.

They dismiss people the way the prom queen turned away suitors based upon the side on which they parted their hair. “We’d hire her, but of the 27 computer applications we want people to know, she only knew 26.” “He came in to interview with me wearing loafers instead of oxfords. Next.”

Then they pick that extreme case who wouldn’t be hirable under any circumstances and use them as a representative of “what’s out there.”

This is what’s keeping people out of work.

Those in a hiring position can be assured that nobody, not even their own mothers, will be telling them, “Good job.”

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

“I’m dead inside.”

So says Max, the tough-as-nails twenty-something waitress on the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls, explaining how she copes to her co-worker with whom she toils at a greasy spoon in Williamsburg.

Still, they’re having a good time shopping at Goodwill, dumping subpar boyfriends and sharing an apartment.

As a one-time broke girl in Manhattan, I put a moratorium on the show as I choose not to relive those years, even via fictional characters.

Even though I can remember with humor the events of my post-grad life, such as the happy hour that allowed, for the price of a glass of wine, the ability to chow down on all the chicken wings I could eat and call it a dinner—it didn’t always seem funny or fun.

When I left Fordham University in 1980, diploma in hand, I spent the summer looking for the work that had not materialized from the letters and résumés I’d begun sending out the previous March.

Although Jan. 1 may technically be the New Year, everything really begins anew in September.

As fall approached and students were going back to school and summer share Hamptonites were going back to their nine-to-fives, I was still unemployed and going nowhere.

By October, though, I found myself with two opportunities: the first a low-paying entry-level position in publishing, the second in advertising. Both involved answering other people’s phones and typing other people’s words. Because Madison Avenue was where I wanted to be, I took the ad job and my dues paying commenced.

I lived at home to save money and brought my lunch for the same reason. When I finally got my own closet-sized apartment, my mother gave me money toward the rent. I’d say, “No, absolutely not. I’m a grown woman with a job,” to myself as I slid the check in my pocket. While others grimaced at the creative director’s dictum that we work late, I was thrilled—the OT meant my evening meal could be petty cashed.

Because I’ve been there, done that, I feel for the recently graduated who have yet to secure their set-the-world-on-fire positions. All I can say is, don’t give up. New York City has always been a competitive, hard-to-get-a-break place, and the only way to succeed is to get out into the fray.

Thirty-one years ago, we were also in a recession with unemployment at 7.5 percent. There was, however, no cyber anything. Every day, I had no choice but to get up and get dressed, hop on the 6 train from the Bronx and, once in Manhattan, sign up with employment agencies or see creative directors who were kind enough to give me five minutes of their time to tell me to my face that they had nothing for me.

Demoralizing? Exhausting? Frustrating? Yes, yes and yes. But I was out meeting people who knew other people who knew someone who might have a job.

In some ways, technology has made it harder to find work, since looking for a job can be done in your PJs while you Google and email your résumé. Signing up with recruiters in person gets you out in the working world, where you never know who you might meet. You may also have to reconcile that your first job may be unpaid. If nothing else, it puts something on your résumé, as well as shows that you really want to work.

New York City is a tough place to live, let alone start out. But being a broke girl in the city with the potential of making it here was, and I believe still is, better than a life in Suburgatory.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

I never really thought of my 16-year-old son, Luke, as a fashion bellwether. He looks like every other teen on the Upper East and West sides, with his uniform that consists of T-shirts with logos—from his school’s crest to The Mets to Bob Marley’s face—and a hoodie to complete the above-the-waist ensemble. Below, he alternates between jeans and khakis, when he’s not in his prized possession: a pair of pajama pants. (Contrary to popular belief, they don’t all dress like the dandies on Gossip Girl.)

So imagine my surprise when the latest designer fashion trend touting sleepwear as streetwear revealed that Luke is not only chic, he’s ahead of his time.

Luke acquired his PJs over a year ago, during a lengthy break between games at a baseball tournament in Mystic, Conn.

We, along with my husband Neil and daughter Meg, went browsing in town. Luke isn’t much of a shopper, so I was taken aback when he led me into a store and showed me a pair of flannel pajama bottoms decorated with lobsters. “Can I get these?” he asked. Because Luke’s always ready with a good joke or a prank, I was wary that I was being “punk’d.”

I walked away and over my shoulder yelled, “Oh, stop it.” Then we went to lunch.

Luke was unusually pouty during our meal. Thus began the litany of “mom” questions one has to ask to feel as though one is doing her maternal duties: “Do you not like the food? Are you feeling OK?” And because Luke was his team’s catcher, there was the understandable, “Do your knees hurt?” In return, I got the teenage boy’s version of “No, no, a thousand times no”—the eye roll. Afterward, as we walked toward the parking lot, it finally dawned on me. “You were serious about those pants, weren’t you?” And with his quirky smile that substituted for a “Yes,” we went back to the store.

As Luke paid the cashier and her co-worker/daughter wrapped them up, the girl made a face at her mother that clearly asked, “He’ll actually wear these?” Her mother shushed her with, “Boys are just…it’s what they do.”

While they questioned Luke’s taste, I took an unexpected pride in his silly-looking purchase. (Did I mention that the pants are a very light blue and the lobsters all over them are a very bright red?) I was even uncharacteristically silent when he wanted to wear his new clothing acquisition not just to bed but out and about. Sans embarrassment.

He has always acted confident, but this showed me it was more than false bravado. Luke liked what he liked. So when he entered the hotel’s game room to play pool and his teammates met him with a sarcastic “Nice pants,” he shook them off, the way his pitchers often do to his signals. Each time he gets a perplexed or disdainful look from a fellow New Yorker, particularly on the subway, he just smiles and shrugs. We all got a good laugh in Montauk when a passerby actually did a double take.

Now though, with everyone readying to jump on the night-clothes-for-day bandwagon, he’ll not want to be seen as one of the crowd and will probably delete from his wardrobe the “lobsters,” as they came to be known in our house. And believe it or not, I will miss them, because for me, they have become a symbol of his self-assurance.

I hope Luke always wears his confidence the way he wore those pants.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl’s debut novel Fat Chick, from The Vineyard Press, is available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

I don’t know how I sat through it.

In I Don’t Know How She Does It, Sarah Jessica Parker is “Kate,” an accomplished hedge fund manager who commutes to Manhattan two days a week to wheel and deal in a palatial office with a counterpart (Pierce Brosnan) who is not only a smart, ethical businessman but is handsome, charming and solicitous. Plus, he’s in love with her.

In the past three decades, I have known NYC working women (as well as been one) who, no matter how much they put themselves out there professionally and personally, have never seen Kate’s success (save those who had it but lost it in the economic downfall), toiled side by side with such a trustworthy partner or found someone so open to romance.

Maybe that explains the real reason for the already well-documented frenzy at Target to score a piece of its Missoni collection. New Yorkers just needed a way to literally grab a little victory—something they see their lives as lacking in.

Out of journalistic curiosity—or perhaps I’m just a glutton for punishment—I returned to Target on 117th and East River Drive the day after the Missoni mêlée had taken place. The store staff was still shell-shocked from the day before, when customers had lined up at 6 a.m. Many stood back in a group, some laughing, others shaking their heads and reciting as though it were their mantra: These people are crazy. And who were we to argue?

After all, I had been there the day before, at 8:10 a.m., but all the designer items had been scooped by 8:05. Some shoppers took more than they needed to sell on eBay; others snagged the lone item they coveted (a woman rode the Missoni bike to the register), while a few left empty-handed.

The next day was not as frantic but just as disappointing for most. Target had not restocked their Missoni shelves. (Read the fine print: while supplies last.) Then there was the walkie-talkie alert that employees were needed in housewares—to break up a fight over a cup (that’s a black & white zig-zag print ceramic Missoni cup.)

With no designer merchandise to buy, most the crowd headed out, but some of us made a pit stop at the Customer Service desk.

It seems that in the spirit of “once you have the thing you wanted you don’t want it anymore,” the previous day’s shoppers were making returns. I inquired if we could buy those items. The answer was a firm “No.” It was explained that they had to go back into Target’s Draconian “system” before they could be put back on the racks.

So people were buying the unwanted purchases right from their owners, leaving the returns cashier with nothing to do but yes, shake her head and mumble the word, “Crazy.”

Aside from the obvious—Missoni is a big designer name ($1500 pants anyone?) and getting something from such a high-end house for next to nothing is quite a coup—I think people just needed a “win,”  such as snagging a coffee mug and, a la Scarlett O’Hara with the carrot, holding it up to recite triumphantly (if only to oneself), “As God as my witness, I’ll never lose out again.”

Perhaps this is how a non-Kate of the world needs to prove she “does it.”

After being crushed under the economy’s bootheel or that of a romantic interest, a small accomplishment is better than none, even if—in the vernacular of the Target staff—it makes you look a little crazy.

By Lorraine Duffy Merkl

I don’t know how I sat through it.

In I Don’t Know How She Does It, Sarah Jessica Parker is “Kate,” an accomplished hedge fund manager who commutes to Manhattan two days a week to wheel and deal in a palatial office with a counterpart (Pierce Brosnan) who is not only a smart, ethical businessman but is handsome, charming and solicitous. Plus, he’s in love with her.

In the past three decades, I have known NYC working women (as well as been one) who, no matter how much they put themselves out there professionally and personally, have never seen Kate’s success (save those who had it but lost it in the economic downfall), toiled side by side with such a trustworthy partner or found someone so open to romance.

Maybe that explains the real reason for the already well-documented frenzy at Target to score a piece of its Missoni collection. New Yorkers just needed a way to literally grab a little victory—something they see their lives as lacking in.

Out of journalistic curiosity—or perhaps I’m just a glutton for punishment—I returned to Target on 117th and East River Drive the day after the Missoni mêlée had taken place. The store staff was still shell-shocked from the day before, when customers had lined up at 6 a.m. Many stood back in a group, some laughing, others shaking their heads and reciting as though it were their mantra: These people are crazy. And who were we to argue?

After all, I had been there the day before, at 8:10 a.m., but all the designer items had been scooped by 8:05. Some shoppers took more than they needed to sell on eBay; others snagged the lone item they coveted (a woman rode the Missoni bike to the register), while a few left empty-handed.

The next day was not as frantic but just as disappointing for most. Target had not restocked their Missoni shelves. (Read the fine print: while supplies last.) Then there was the walkie-talkie alert that employees were needed in housewares—to break up a fight over a cup (that’s a black & white zig-zag print ceramic Missoni cup.)

With no designer merchandise to buy, most the crowd headed out, but some of us made a pit stop at the Customer Service desk.

It seems that in the spirit of “once you have the thing you wanted you don’t want it anymore,” the previous day’s shoppers were making returns. I inquired if we could buy those items. The answer was a firm “No.” It was explained that they had to go back into Target’s Draconian “system” before they could be put back on the racks.

So people were buying the unwanted purchases right from their owners, leaving the returns cashier with nothing to do but yes, shake her head and mumble the word, “Crazy.”

Aside from the obvious—Missoni is a big designer name ($1500 pants anyone?) and getting something from such a high-end house for next to nothing is quite a coup—I think people just needed a “win,”  such as snagging a coffee mug and, a la Scarlett O’Hara with the carrot, holding it up to recite triumphantly (if only to oneself), “As God as my witness, I’ll never lose out again.”

Perhaps this is how a non-Kate of the world needs to prove she “does it.”

After being crushed under the economy’s bootheel or that of a romantic interest, a small accomplishment is better than none, even if—in the vernacular of the Target staff—it makes you look a little crazy.