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Friday, May 29, 2020

dress stress


"You should always get dressed over your head!", my friend, Carolyn instructed. 

We were dress shopping, of all things.  How many dress shops had we visited at that point?  I'd lost count.

I hadn't thought of the always-over-your-head strategy as I was trying to step into yet another dress.  After all, we step into skirts, right?  Why not step into a dress that is part skirt??

But with Carolyn's tutelage, I tossed that dress over my head and let gravity do the rest.  Then we looked at each other. 
Meh.  The dresses kinda sucked.

We were high school seniors and had been chosen as Homecoming attendants.


Different schools do different homecomings. Some choose couples from each class, some choose king and queen during the football game, etc.  My school chose the royalty a couple weeks ahead of time.  I don't know who decides these things, but if nothing else, it helped insure that we would have matching dresses.  *eye roll*

So, Kathy the queen, Carolyn, Lisa the other attendant, and I took a dress shopping trip, chaperoned by one of Kathy's older sisters.  We lived in a small town which meant there were no decent dresses to be had for about 100 miles.  It was a day.

As the day grew long and we all grew weary, we expressed our gratitude to Kathy's sister for taking on the task. 

"I can't imagine if Mom would've driven us!", Kathy extolled. "We would be all, 'F**K YOU, MOM!' by the end of the day!"

(Kathy had a mouth on her.  I've long since lost touch with her, but have heard from mutual friends that she's found Jesus)

Eventually, we non-queens magically managed to find our homecoming dresses in the all important school color blue.  Kathy's was white.  Paid for those suckers and high tailed it back to our podunk town so we could have a Homecoming. That dress would never be worn again, not by me anyways. 




Oh yeah, we also had a local seamstress make these white flowy game-night outfits. 

I remember them being rather pajama like. 

Looking back, we resemble sacrificial virgins (hardly) for some cult.

Off to the honor of happily throwing ourselves into a volcano or some such.








In the end, the whole thing went off without a hitch.  The football team won the game, it didn't rain on us in during our pajama half-time, and there was no high school drama at the dance.

On second thought, two out of three isn't bad.  Is there any such thing as a drama free high school dance?

I will also mention that that was the year of the infamous last place boob float.

No really, it's a space ship


But at least our dresses matched, and I put it on over my head.

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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:
1. Share a 12th grade memory.




8 comments:

R's Rue said...

Love it.

Astrid said...

Love this tale! We didn't have a homecoming king or queen at our high school graduation (it's not really a thing here in the Netherlands I guess), but I do know about dresses I wore only once (ie. my wedding dress, which by the way was black and I still have). Loved Carolyn's comment about always wearing a dress over your head. Now I can't remember for the life of me how I put on dresses even though I wore one yesterday.

Margaret (Peggy or Peg too) said...

OMG I loved this. boob float and cult outfit.
And you are so correct it did look like something they wore in the HBO show, The Leftovers. Too funny Abby.
You look beautiful in your dress and white pj's. And I learned that dress tip from my mom but I still try to step in them if I can.
I hardly wear dresses but if I do...feet first.

Abby said...

R's, thanks :)

Astrid, Homecoming is a to-do to honor school alumni during football season. I understand that American high school football is a much bigger deal than that of any other country. A black wedding dress - COOL!
Carolyn's family had 6 kids, 5 of whom were girls. I think they had standard methods for several processes!

Peggy, The Leftovers! Totally!
I'm more of a skirt girl on the rare occasion, but when I do put on a dress, it's ALWAYS over my head since that fateful day.

May 29, 2020 at 12:58 PM

Patty said...

Love this, Abby!!

Laughed so much about your potty-mouthed friend. I had a few like that and, oddly enough, Jesus stepped in with a bar of soap and a lecture. When I see them today, it's difficult not to re-engage them in profanity.

Gave a lot of thought about stepping-in to a dress vs. over-the-head...guessing I stepped my way through a lot over the years, including my wedding gown.

And, I think you looked fabulous in your "pajamas", kiddo!

Stay safe!

Abby said...

Patty, I guess a lot of potty-mouths come around eventually. I know of others who took the opposite route - Jesus first, then smut mouth.

Linda Hensley said...

Laughing myself silly over sacrificial virgins with a boob float :D You looked mahvelous!

Abby said...

Linda, as I recall, none of us were particularly fond of the sacrificial virgin cult PJs. Telling?