Monday 15 August 2011

Time Marches On


Oh dear readers, where does the time go?
The weekend goes by so fast and then, before you know it, you’re walking along to the dry cleaner and post office and there, on the sidewalk, a redish-yellowish-orangish maple leaf.  It’s Autumn and the start of another year. 
For me the year starts in Autumn.  I have been in school too long.  I don’t know if this will change anytime soon.  Come to think of it, it is a weird time to think of a new year beginning when everything is slowly winding down for the long winter.  But it is around this time that I get a hankering for a new box of crayons.  You know the one.  That yellow and green box with 64 colours, most of which you have never imagined, and a sharpener in the back? 
When I was a kid I didn’t always get a new box of crayons for the school year.  I don’t think it was because we didn’t have the money, I think it was because a new box of crayons, when the old box was still perfectly usable, would be wasteful.  I get the lesson now.  Then, it was just another item on the ‘hey-look-at-me-I’m-not-like-you’ list.  Right up there with brown bread and tofu-spread sandwiches, carob ‘chocolate,’ and brown rice balls in the lunch box with a generic picture.  No My Pretty Pony or Jem lunch boxes for me.  Although, I believe I had a parent-approved Muppet Show lunch box for awhile, but it was metal and had sharp edges and somehow it turned into the storage container for clown make-up. 
As I say, I get the lesson now.  I will probably insist my children use their crayons until they can no longer be fished out of the crevices of that yellow and green box or get lost in the sharpener.  I will also insist on a ‘timeless’ lunch receptacle (minus the tofu spread, carob, and rice balls). 
You live, you learn.  However, while I never have a hankering for tofu spread, carob and rice balls, I do still yearn for a fresh box of crayons. 

This weekend, I discovered there is also a time when you will unwittingly learn (and follow in) your mother’s fashion choices.  Choices you once mocked.  My time has come.  Take a look at these two photos.  (Ignore the facial expressions…I was more concerned with the fact I was standing on our sidebar trying to get a photo in the mirror above the mantle than smiling.)



What do you see? 
Let me tell you what you see.  An off-the-shoulder styling.  When I was a child, maybe still-I don’t know, my mother routinely cut the collars out of her shirts.  She said she did this because they were too tight around her neck.  This may be, but it also created an off-the-shoulder style that became her signature for awhile.  At least to me.  (If I had access to the Rubbermaid-box-o-photos in the parents’ basement, I would provide proof.  For now, you just have to trust me on this one.)
I remember a lot of comments/jokes about being a member of the Flashdance cast.  If I recall correctly, there may also have been a half mocking tutorial about how to properly cut a collar in the playground of the day-care center where she worked.  Maybe. 
I may be making this up.
Regardless, it appears I have come to that age where it feels like a good fashion moment to wear the ‘good’ bra because the strap will be on show.  Hmm….  This could go horribly wrong and the next thing you know I will be wearing patchouli, going without the bra altogether and attacking my t-shirt drawer with scissors. 

I’m not sure where I am going with this, but I will tell you that I love this new-to-me shirt (a swap piece) and was seriously considering getting some more.  After this realization, I may leave it at just the one. 
I'm not ready to become my mother, just yet.  

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