When it rains, it pours
I have a relative getting married this weekend. While this wouldn’t normally be a problem in and of itself, the sad fact of the matter is, I haven’t bought a dress since 1998. That was the year I went to prom, more on principle than out of a strong urge to wear a corsage and dyed-to-match-the-dress purple shoes.
Anyhow, I needed a dress. Before getting into the car, my mom and I checked on the chickens. Inexplicably, the nearsighted chicken I oh-so-cleverly refer to as “Whitey” or “Blindy,” depending on my whim, had found her way to the outdoor portion of the coop. Whitey has never really been outside before, because she can’t seem to see very well, and has a hard enough time finding the food and water, let alone the out of doors.
I considered putting her back in the coop, in case she was getting thirsty and couldn’t figure out how to get back inside, but decided I should let her have her moment in the sun, and if she was still out when we got back, I’d carry her back inside.
Anyway, we get to the mall and begin trying on dresses. If you’re a dude, and have never had to shop for a dress, consider yourself lucky. There are few things worse, in my opinion, than having to try on a bunch of dresses. First of all, who really wants to wear a dress? When you wear a dress, you have to comport yourself in a semi-ladylike fashion. You have to walk carefully, and sit carefully, and generally not run amok as one sometimes find occasion to do. Dresses majorly cramp your style, man.
Secondly, you have to wear all manner of annoying undergarments. Slips? Tights? Give me a break. I encourage you, should you be of the XY chromosome persuasion, to purchase a pair of nylons and try walking around for 5 minutes. Who honestly came up with the idea of pantyhose? Who thought it was such a good idea to wear constrictive plastic?
Shopping for dresses is tricky. In the fashion world, there isn’t really any kind of compromise between slutty or muumuu. You either showcase half of your chest and/or thighs, or you wear something so baggy that it makes you look much bigger than you really are.
Anyway, I had quite an ordeal, trying to find something vaguely inoffensive. Add to these requirements the fact that I like wearing loud ’60s patterns, and your choices dramatically decrease. Basically I grabbed armloads of dresses and hoped that something would fit.
Once inside the dressing room, I began the struggle to actually put the darn things on. With dresses, you either have to tug them on like a shirt, or pull them up like pants, depending on the cut. Sometimes you’re faced with an impossible decision: a dress whose neckline is too small to fit above the hips, or pull down over your elbows.
This happens more often than you might think, at least to me. As I tugged a brown cotton sundress over my head, I realized I was stuck! I had pulled it over my head, but was at a loss for what to do with my elbows, trapped in the constraining bodice. I couldn’t pull it down, and my arms were too confined to take it off! Help! I was trapped half-way in a dress in a J.C. Penney fitting room!!! A momentary wave of panic washed over me. What would Houdini do? I didn’t really want to invite my mom or an employee in, considering my half-clad state, but I was totally and utterly stuck.
Taking a deep breath, I wriggled my arms around until I could tug the offending dress back off. “How’s it going in there?” my mom called over.
“Fine, except I can’t figure out how to put on this dress,” I grumbled. “Let me know if you can figure it out.” I pushed the dress over the doorway at her.
“You have to pull the side zipper all the way down,” she explained. “It was only half way unzipped.”
FUCKING DRESSES.
I continued trying on dresses, feeling a lot like Goldilocks in search of her perfect breakfast cereal, when my mom returned. “The sky looks really weird right now,” she said informed me. “It’s navy. I think we’re about to get a bad storm. Are you about finished?”
I hurried up, tossed her the least onerous two dresses, figuring I could decide later, and met her by the register. The sky was indeed navy, with a purplish tinge. We waited for the world’s slowest prom dress shopper to count out a handful of twenties, and by the time we were rung up, the sky had turned grey. As we hurried through the mall to Macy’s, where we had parked, a voice came on over the public address system.
“Please seek shelter in the nearest store,” the voice intoned.
Wonderful. We peek out the window at Macy’s, and are confronted with what appears to be Tropical Storm Wilhelma. The rain is pouring so hard, and at such an angle, that it appears nearly white outside. There’s pretty much no visibility, and the wind is howling.
“Shopping it is,” my mom announced, realizing there’s no way we can drive home.
As we turn to poke around in the shoe department, the voice returns over the speaker. “There’s been a tornado spotted a mile away, near the airport. Please take shelter in one of the restrooms.”
We spend the next half hour elbow-to-elbow in the bathroom with a bunch of women and three dudes. Good times!
Finally, a clerk shopkeep receives a call on her cell phone from her husband, informing her that the tornado had passed into the next county. We all spill out of the restroom and hop into our cars. Driving home was a little stressful, with the POSSIBILITY OF IMMINENT DOOM and all, but we finally made it back.
Guess who’s still sitting outside on a perch, completely miserably sopping wet?
Half an hour of blow-drying later, she’s looking much more like her normal self. We’ve booked her four-star accomodations INSIDE THE HOUSE, in one of the bathrooms, to pamper her after her hard day. Poor little chicken!
Slowly drying. My apologies for the inclusion of the world’s ugliest pink toilet, one of the few things we don’t like about our new house.
Anyway, here are my tentative dresses. Are these at all weddingy? I think I’ll wear the green one.
I should have been born in the ’60s.
