Dress-up

I continue to impress the people in the world around me with my thorough knowledge of pop culture, and I owe it all to Nintendo Wii.  Without Wii and its assortment of games, I not would know the words to any Katy Perry songs.  I would not know how awesome I am at dancing to Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell."  My skills at defeating all the odds to be super champion of MarioKart would still be undiscovered.

To be clear, I am not openly declaring myself to be the champion of all Wii games ever made.  But I am pretty good at some of them.  Maybe not Call of Duty or Raving Rabbids, but maybe someday.  Actually, combat games are never going to go well for me, so let's just forget about those.  I get too disoriented and just start shooting everything.  Never a good sign.

Now to totally change subjects!  Tonight I am going to a wedding.  It should be fun, but wearing a dress is always a little bit scary for me.  Why is that?

Well. 

When I was a child, we were a regular church-going family.  Every Sunday, rain or shine, we were up earlier than is decent for a weekend, freshly scrubbed, dressed to the nines and expected to sit nicely in a pew and attend Sunday School. 

Most of this routine was not bothersome to me, but the part where we were "dressed to the nines" always caused some consternation.  At least for me. 

First of all, the prerequisite item of clothing to be considered "dressed up" is right there in the title:  a dress.  I did not hate dresses.  I was actually somewhat ambivalent towards them.  Sure I wore them on occasion in my daily rotation, but I wasn't the kind of girl who insisted on them (or against them).

Next, when wearing a dress, at least back in the 1980's, the ensemble could not be considered truly worthy of a formal occasion unless tights were worn underneath.  This served multiple purposes.  First, we lived in Minnesota and sometimes the weather was inclement.  Tights provided added protection for the legs from the elements and sometimes additional warmth.  Second, modesty is sometimes an issue for children as they are prone to climbing, running and jumping all over the place regardless of what they are wearing.  Underwear may come into view at some point, and this simply is not acceptable in public, especially at God's house.

Now that you know why I wore tights, I will tell you why I hated wearing them.  There is some inherent flaw in the design of tights, likely due to the fact that they encapsulate the feet as well as the legs and have a tendency to take a downward dragging direction in the course of movement while wearing them.  This sometimes leads to one's mother stopping to hike them up, often in an obvious and slightly embarrassing manner.  The top of the tights also have an odd propensity to "roll."  As in rolling down.  As in eventually rolling off.  This problem is uncomfortable and even more embarrassing to remedy.

The final piece of dress up that was required were "nice shoes."  While children's fashion has now evolved to include much more stylish and comfortable varieties of footwear, during the 80's in rural MN, there were far few options.  Buster Brown Shoes were the haute couture items du jour.  Mine were usually black flats with some sort of dressy punch out design on the toes and featured buckles.  They were not wildly uncomfortable, but they were extremely cumbersome to put on and remove.  Also, they were quite slippery on all surfaces, but apparently snow boots and/or Care Bear Velcro sneakers were not acceptable alternatives.

Now that I am older and have more control over my wardrobe, things are different.  When I wear dresses, I do not wear tights, or even panty hose if I can avoid it.  I also have a wider variety of shoes, some with buckles, but mostly with a heel.  I have now achieved some degree of master over buckles, but I have to admit that most of my dress shoes are slip-ons. 

Unfortunately, I still must contend with the sometimes inclement weather of Minnesota.  For this reason, I rarely wear dresses after October or before May.  As it is August, tonight I will be going without tights and wearing heels.  With buckles.  I hope this means that they will stay on securely as I intend to use some of my new-found Wii dancing skills to impress at the wedding reception.  Wish me luck.