My first favorite outfit. Memories of wearing the “WET” look.

I did have years of nun driven, boyish, not an ounce of lace outfits growing up in my first years of school.  Couple this with the black and white saddle shoe, and you have don’t even bother trying.  You are now stuck in the PRACTICAL category.  After my first Catholic school closed, I was sent to my second one, much closer to home, still on the bus.  In my third year after surviving my second year with Mrs. Parks, God gave me the most wonderful…and in my eyes…handsome teacher I’ll call Mr. R.  Yes this was my turnaround year. I’ll blog about him later as he deserves his own blog.   Both in terms of nice teacher and “groovy” outfits I chose myself, third grade was good to me.

Here I would sit in my cardigan acrylic sweater, with matching plastic buttons, ankle socks, flat oxfords and I would thumb through the Sears catalog and dream of self-chosen outfits, in the colors and styles that I wanted.  Then, one day,  I saw it and it was love at first sight.   In a large discount store, there it was, a navy blue, shiny, pleather jumper with a dropped waist and a zipper in the back, almost my size.  Where have you been all my life?  My mom had been shopping in all the wrong stores.   I paid for it with my own allowance and I loved it.  I walked with it like I was on the runway myself as my mom would never buy such a“thing” probably because it wasn’t ugly and nun like.  My mom at least liked that fact that it was made of the same type of material as an outdoor tablecloth so all she had to do was wipe it down.  I called this jumper “the WET look.”  It was my favorite self-chosen outfit.  I wore it with a pick blouse underneath and “HOT PINK” knee socks and these suede almost loafers shoes.  Classmates from my former school wouldn’t recognize me.  I was like the girl Marcia Brady did a makeover on…the one who kept bumping into things before Marcia made her pretty.  This outfit could easily be worn on any Brady Bunch episode, my very most favorite show…Fridays 8 PM. Yes, no longer the ugly, nun inspired, androgynous outfits from hand me down land.  This time I was almost “That Girl” pretty.  I would wear it to my first school studio picture I was allowed to take.  Two happy things in my life that I was never allowed to have?  I better be careful and not let anyone see how happy I was.
My mother had some weird fear and in kindergarten through 2^nd grade about me being able to take a school photo so I was not in school the day we were to take pictures.  I hated it, when everyone received the large envelopes while I sat there like Moses on Valentine’s Day, rejected by not having what everybody else had.  Finally,in third grade, I too would get to use the small comb they gave you the day before and get my picture taken.  Picture day in Catholic school is a joy because no uniforms and my hair was at least cut even with curls from sponge rollers.  I looked good and I knew it.

This outfit was not only great for school pictures it was my one and only “good” outfit for church and any other situation that needed me to dress up.  During this year, 3 elderly relatives, who lived many states over, had passed away within months.  We were to trek the 10 hour drive to go to the drawn out three day wake and funeral.  I hardly knew them so naturally without holding too much of a relationship I wasn’t that sad.  With each succeeding death I was less sad.  You see, funerals were only sad for grownups.  The wakes would last for 3 long days while the adults would commiserate and talk and catch up they would be less aware of what we were doing.   While this pleather jumper outfit worked for school photography day, it was out of place for a funeral, but I did have only ONE good outfit…BOO HOO??  I think not.  I would wear that outfit everyday if I was allowed.  It fit my personality if not my small frame, the stiff jumper was like ding, dong bell, with two little hot pink knee socks, in contant motion, and I loved it almost as much as my first pair of loafers.

After the unbearable long car trip, we arrived, dressed in our Sunday best into the somber funeral home.  First of all I made my entrance.  TAH DAH! I would proudly walk into the funeral room where the family relative was laid out.  Two of my older cousins, stopped me and asked me why I was wearing such a thing to a funeral.  I told them they should get “with it”…don’t you know the “wet look” when you see it?  Next say a prayer, blah, blah, blah, not interested, not sad, soon adults will be preoccupied with talk from old days.  Then we would have our own fun.  My cousin, a few years older.  She was old enough to be in my world, old enough to boss me around, and for a short Cinderella time would know how to have so much fun, especially in a funeral home, without bothering our parents.  Once the adults told us it was OK to walk around and not cause trouble we were off like colts at the Kentucky Derby.  First stop, another family’s deceased relatives wake (in those days, simultaneous wakes would be happening on different floors. ) Yes, weaving in and out like hot knife through butter.  We were too quick and now on a “ Born to be Wild” ride through the next somber 5 hours done our way.  Really.. here's how you work a funeral home at our age and sorry to say it was NOT sitting down crying with a rosary.  In those days, funeral wakes would be for two consecutive nights at least 5 hours each, then a long drawn out funeral procession with an hour long mass, followed by a depressing stint at the cemetery.

We would "crash" another wake in progress.  We would innocently walk up to the kneeling apparatus in front of the coffin of this unrelated deceased person, pretending to pray.  If asked who and what for we told them we wanted to pray for everyone and could we say a few prayers.  While we knelt there, we made fun of how the body looked, all old, waxy hands interwoven with a rosary.  Then at the right moment, my cousin would say..”I saw her breathing.”  I would say “No” but then with all this Catholic talk of rising from the dead, and pictures showing all the saints flying around in heaven, young concrete learners such as myself might of thought; “Gee maybe they are breathing…maybe they will become a saint and float right out of here, that would be so cool.”  At this time, we were beginning to attract attention, my outfit didn’t help.  We were also "praying" a long time, but because we were kneeling to pray, nobody had the nerve to ask us to leave that is until my cousin told me to touch one of those waxy, dead hands.  You know, you look at them and they look so real, you touch them and you are shocked by how ice cold they are and you naturally…well.. jump up and then loudly object; "Stop telling me to touch those dead hands!"   This time a designated arbitrary relative would get the bigger than life Funeral  Director to see where our dead relative was laid out and try to return us….for  a while.  Guess what BIG guy.  We were there to stay ALL night at YOUR funeral home, until the priest would come to relieve you of your babysitting duties and we would all have to sit and pray, a whole rosary.    Did our parents really think we were going to sit quietly and talk to boring, non-fun, sad, know-it-all, adults the whole time?  We would sit until they were once again sidetracked by a new relative coming in.  This time, we promised not to go into other rooms and touch the dead bodies. 

That was a promise we kept.  No really… we didn’t want non-approved adults disciplining us.   Instead we were to have even more fun.  Hide and Go Seek…yes..in a  large funeral home.  Hide and Go Seek was my favorite game as a child growing up because I was small, crafty, and good at it.  Being the youngest, I would have to be the first  to close my eyes and count.  Meanwhile, my other cousins hid.  You know, if you play hide and seek a lot you get really good at it finding hiding places anywhere.  Bathrooms, closets, and even large funeral  flower arrangements around the caskets, are all now little magical caves of hiding places.  OK so what, they could see you standing behind the flower arrangements, maybe not if you stood still.  Oh, is this still being too close to a dead body not in our family?  We would skip to the next room, run and dodge from the Funeral Director, one step behind our energy.  I loved these Funeral Homes and wakes(why are they named that?), the distraction of overbearing adults, pleather jumper and hot pink, up and down, no crying here about who died. They were old anyways. 

The best hiding place would always be the closet because it was deep with overcoats.  We would squeeze inside the deepest corner and wait.  If the door opened we would jump out and scream like those springy snakes that leap out of the can.  We got in trouble again if it wasn’t always my cousin but some old lady now newly upset.  Here comes the fat Funeral Director, mad as a hornet…but.. first you gotta catch us.  Overweight Funeral Directors don’t run they walk in a somber stride.  They are waxy themselves from working too much around death and having to deal with miserable sadness as an occupation, no healthy sense of humor either. We had him by a mile.  Long enough to catch our breath and laugh at him too. 

I grew up looking forward to family funerals.  We never stopped once, we had more fun than a singer leaping out into the audience to people surf.  Gulps of laughter, never once did we stop to think if we were inappropriate.   It was even funnier when you knew just how far to push the envelope without getting into trouble, ever funnier that it wasn’t proper.  The heck with proper, the heck with ugly saddle shoes, the heck with all those ugly outfits, I was on my own American Idol show and I would feel like the elite winner, until the funeral was over and I would turn into a pumpkin. It was good to feel happy and let out from the constant Catholic regime and ,as young children, we wanted to be happy not sad. We were alive, and in loving life we did NOT want to be sad and talk about death.   BTW, if you’re wondering where the best hiding places are in a Funeral Home, the first would be standing on top of the toilet seat, so they can’t see your feet, locking the stall door (the waiting women can go into another stall, there’s other ones…now stop giving me away)  The other one was the coat closet because of the Jack in the Box effect.

The first funeral was my grandfather, sorry hardly knew him and I knew he didn’t care for my jumpy nature.  He tolerated me at visits.  Kids can tell.  The second was my other grandfather, liked him slightly better but all I remember is what a perfectionist he was.  You would show him your hand you traced and cut out from a piece of paper and he would only show you the areas of mistakes.  That’s all I remember about him.  The final funeral, this was all within months, was my Great Auntie Em.  The poor Funeral Director thought his patrol days were finished after the first relative passed and now here I was, unmistakable in my outfit, for a third time.  He was going to the local liquor store telling the cashier the unbelievable trilogy.  Not sad about this Great Aunt either as I met her a few times and me being blessed with the giggling, happy, gene and her being over strict, we meshed, barely. Personality differences I guess.

All I remember about Great Auntie Em was how strict she was, when we got together during the holidays.  We slept over my  fun Auntie’s House, she would let us cousins sleep in sleeping bags on the living room floor.  Really??  This house is past super fun.  The sleeping bags had a mustard colored, flannel, lining with pictures of hunting and wild ducks, they smelled of last summer's campfire and the zippers always stuck.  The adults really thought they would put us all in there and we would go to sleep.  Not happening.  With the adults talking and playing cards in the kitchen, we were to have our own party and still vibrant with dance and joy.  Great Auntie Em would walk into the snake pit of young fun.  She would grab me by the arm and yell “You’re being naughty. You kids aren’t minding me! You don't mind me!”  I retorted to get her out of our place “No Auntie Em…I don’t mind you.”  I really wasn’t trying to be clever, the card playing adults,in the other room, laughed at this miscommunication.  This Abbott and Costello routine went on for a while. 

Every time she was able to catch one of us she would get in your grill, inches from your face, and give you the Binaca blast that smelled of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum she contantly chewed.  Great Auntie Em always kept a large pack of gum in her housecoat. This stash was mixed with  plenty of Halls menthol lyptus.  When she asked you if you wanted a “piece of candy” the right answer was “NO.”  Cough drops are NOT candy, all sticky from her pocket.  That’s all I remember from her.  The only ones with the kyrptonite to stop us that night would be our mothers enjoying a welcome break from patrol duty, so I guess that is why they sent in Great Auntie Em to “calm us down.”  Opposite effect, we laughed all the harder.  “Why does her breath smell like that? “ Poor Great Auntie Em.  Never married, and now we were to have one more hurrah in the funeral home at her timely expense, she would not have approved, but then there wasn’t anything she could do about it. 

After her funeral, I was glad we didn’t have to visit the miserable, not liking me, relatives.  Only the fun lovable one was left…thank God.  She was the only one that liked me because I felt and knew that she loved me.  The rest were going through the motions.  Crude writing, yes, but truthful.  No hard feelings, they made up for their misery by being the guest of honor at the Funeral Home whirlwind wakes. 

In looking back, I would say, have your fun now and don’t get too caught up in accumulating physical things.  Appreciate the relationships, love the memories, make a few good friends.  If you are grabbing your sore sides from unbridled laughter, do it.  It’s the soul at play.  If you observe young children at play in the store, weaving in and out of the clothing racks, laughing at their own game, let them have their fun as long as they don't knock anyone over.  That time belongs to them and soon someone, somewhere down the line with permanently yank that true JOY out of them as they grow up and become adults.  So true, really... when's the last time you saw grown adults running unbridled , through a store or sidewalk, in shared, loud, laughter?  No, someone surgically removed those soulful sessions and put in more "appropriate" maneuvers.  I miss that adrenaline slide of shared joy and laughter, gulping for air because we weren't able to laugh any harder. We need to try and find our way back to that and place it somewhere in our lives, back to its rightful place.

I read  a creative epitaph once that said “Everyday above the ground is a good one.”  I agree.  Even if you’re very last ones are filled good conversation and fun for the people still here.  Don’t forget the fun of a good deep closet.

It was shiny like this in Navy Blue.