Manic Monday

Embarrassing...

If you had to pick the most embarrassing thing your parents did to you as a child, what was it?

To a certain extent, just being my parents was embarrassing: I never remember either of them with hair any color but white. They did a lot of similar things not to embarrass me (I think) but because that's just who they were.

The biggest battle was always clothes. My mother was "forward-thinking" enough to let my sisters wear "dungarees" for play; she was told by her mother-in-law that girls shouldn't wear trousers. Ever. So yeah, that was the late 40s into the early 60s.

I started school at the end of the 60s. No dress code to speak of at school. I vividly remember wanting go-go boots in 6th grade: no dice. I also remember wanting to NOT have to wear a skirt/dress to school most days: no dice. My sister--the Fun One--bought me my first pair of jeans when I was 13. If I could have, I would have worn those jeans every day for the rest of my school years.

Meanwhile, mom had made me several pairs of "perfectly serviceable" jeans on the sewing machine. Note: they had elastic waistbands and stovepipe legs and were ugly. I wouldn't even wear them now, 25 years later (as if I could fit into them).

Mom finally gave in, but not without a great deal of moaning about me being ungrateful, etc.etc.etc. All of this may help to explain why I haven't work a skirt or a dress in any capacity since sometime last fall. The only reason I wear them at all in the summer is because they are cooler.

Obviously, I'm warped for life. ;-)