Girl, That Skirt!

I'm usually not a big shopper but yesterday I went to the mall and did a little material object acquisition. I got a case to protect my new red iPod from iDeath. More socks for my two sons. A shirt from Ann Taylor and a very lovely and classic shirt dress from Express. Although I bought the dress, while I was trying it on, I found myself thinking that it was a bit on the short side.

My, how things change. This dress was just above the knee length. Ten years ago, I would have thought the dress was a bit long. Twenty years before that, despite the fact that I was forbidden by my parents to wear mini skirts and they had never bought me one, I wore skirts that were so short that the security guards at my high school threatened to send me home to change.

How did that happen?

Every day I left the house wearing the mother sanctioned Talbots-type conservative outfit, complete with penny loafers. The school bus would come, number 172, blaring Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me".

I'd climb on and slide to the last two back seats. Once on the bus, I'd find myself seated across from a boy who reeked of weed and enjoyed our ride to school by surreptitiously sipping from a flask and slurring my nickname "Lizzie" into "Ishhe".

"Isshe, you gonna put one of them short skirts on today?" he'd ask.

In response I'd laugh and tell him he'd better not peek while I changed. Then I'd take what I was actually going to wear to school out of my backpack. These skirts that emerged from my bag, a short black denim or a micro mini red cotton number, were borrowed from my second cousins who also attended my high school.

To start the transformation, first I pulled the skirt up and over my pants. Then I'd unbutton the pants and slide them off. I'd fold them up and stick them into my backpack. A couple times a week, I'd step off the school bus in one of these mini skirts, rain or shine, and whether it was 20 degrees or 80 degrees. After school let out, I'd transform back into the conservative pants and stick the skirt into my book bag. I wonder what that bus driver must have thought of my back-row transformations. (Unless she reads this blog, I guess we'll never know).

My parents were none the wiser until the unfortunate day my dad, unbeknownst to me, decided to pick me up from school. I remember strolling to my locker with one of my cousins, (their lockers were right next to mine). We were strutting in our matching black skirts and red tops like we knew we were hot stuff. And then my cousin gasped, "Oh my gosh, Liz! There's your dad!"

I looked down the hallway toward my locker and horror of horrors! My father was standing right there and he looked furious!!

If I could have turned and run the other way, I would have. But, I couldn't. So I propelled myself forward and heard him growl, "What do you have on?"

I've always been quick on my feet so I told him some lie about how someone had spilled their chocolate milk on me at lunch and how my cousin had had some extra clothes in her locker so I'd had no choice but to put the skirt on.

He didn't look like he believed me at all. My cousin tried to back me up, but he still wasn't buying it. I was such big trouble with my dad that I couldn't even imagine the thunder my mom would bring when she found out. I knew I'd be lucky if she let me out of the house ever again and alas, my mini skirt days were definitely over.

When I finally got to college I figured it was my chance to wear minis again. But, it was the height of the grunge movement. In general, minis and grunge just didn't make a good mix. Still, I remember the first time I went to my parent's house in a mini skirt, focused on proving that I could wear whatever I wanted when I wanted. All my mom would say was, "Oh, that's a cute outfit!" That drove me crazy! Why couldn't it have been a cute outfit five years earlier?

Since then, I've worn my share of mini skirts and sometimes miss the days of going dancing in a denim mini, black opaque tights and black Doc Martens. I guess it's good that I got all that out of my system because I've clearly become more conservative in my thirties if I think that a just above the knee-length dress is short.

At this rate, I'll probably be in floor-length skirts and dresses by the time I hit fifty.