Two Peas in a Pod -- Dress-Up Is Still Fun!
In one of my recent entries I mentioned the “adventures” in my life. I guess it’s time I share one or two of these escapades. Admittedly they will seem silly, but I have found that a good dose of “silly” does one’s soul good. Laugh at yourself, I promise it won’t hurt.
But to the adventures . . .
One of them began with a Halloween party after hours with my co-workers. I mentioned that I was a Fed in my career. If one is doing one’s job, as one should in the Government, there is little time for frivolity. Some, mind you, but not enough for those of us who party hearty. So, we would meet at someone’s home for the after hours nuttiness. And if I came, nuttiness is just what the hostess got.
One year my friend, my bosom pal, my alter ego and I decided to dress alike. Now this particular woman knew everything there was to know about me. She knew more than my husband sometimes. She was the kind of friend who stuck. You know the old saying - - friends help friends move furniture, true friends help friends move bodies. (We were not THAT bad, but that is simply a metaphor to let you know just how close we were.)
Since we went everywhere together, ate, worked, told our secrets, I think people thought we were twins. And that is where the idea came from – I suggested we should dress as two peas in a pod.
Now, I have always been a frustrated wardrobe woman who can’t sew a good straight line. So anything we undertook had to be so simplistic an amoeba could make it. We fashioned our simple outfits starting with black garbage bags—cutting neck and arm holes so we could wear it like a mini dress over our black slacks. Then a piece of green poster board was stuck to our fronts, complete with peas (in the pod that we drew) cut out of more green paper. And to top it off, I added a chapeau, the simplest but cutest accoutrement to our outfit. I just gathered up some green and lime green felt, hot glued a stem coming out of the middle of it, and we pinned that into our hair. I have to say that it was cute even if it was my crude attempt at costume flair.
I put on my outfit and went to pick my buddy up at another parking lot, so we could go in one car. When I got there, my good friend Bill was backing out, did not see me (or me him—can’t remember) and ping we had a slight fender bender. I jumped out, crying out that I was sorry, was he hurt? . . . etc. But, as I think back on it, I would not take a fortune for the look on his face. He was not headed to a costume party and did not know what to make of a “green pea” running toward him. We had a good laugh, no damage done, and I went on my way to join my fellow pod-mate so we could wow the party goers with our attire.
There was one other occasion when we dressed alike. In the Government one gets an awful lot of training. The latest buzz was Stephen Covey and his 7 Habits for Highly Effective People. We heard that ad nauseam, until we decided to strike back. The phrase “paradigm shift” was touted on a daily basis, and stuck in our craws. So, when we had to make a presentation at another after hours event for a fun team-building exercise we knew what we would do. It could be creative—and we dressed—drum roll, please--- as a “pair of dimes.” This time my daughter the artist, spray painted some round poster board a silver hue, drew a Roosevelt dime image on the front, and we wore that. Of course, as an outstanding couturier I added yet another hat. It was a simple silver pie pan to denote a coin, with ribbon that anchored it to our heads by tying under our chins. At the end of our talk, we did a side-step maneuver to illustrate -- you guessed it, a “pair-a-dime shift.”
So, I urge you (within the confines of modesty and goofy style) to “dress up” once in a while. Let go of convention, who will remember this a hundred years from now? I am happy I can show my granddaughter that I was not always stodgy. I once dressed up as a green pea, had a “wreck,” and attended a great Halloween bash all in one day . . . and I didn’t have one single drink.