Clothes Pony.

When I was two years old, I made AM late for her one-day-a-week of work.
“What happened to you?” Her boss asked when she finally arrived flustered sometime after midday.
“I just wrestled with a toddler over what she would wear to preschool.”
“Why didn’t you tell her what to wear and just put it on her?”
“I tried. But she refused.”
Meanwhile, I was relaxing in story time wearing the eclectic mix of a Cinderella costume with gumboots and a straw hat.

RG has raised me to believe that people judge books by their cover and therefore I should brush my hair.
“Hygiene is not just a tall girl,” he said to me every morning of my childhood when I refused to have a shower or take off my Batman shirt for the eighth day in a row.
I, however, live by the belief that life is too short to waste time standing in front of a mirror with a straightening iron and like to grab the closest shirt possible when I wake up in the morning, forced to go out in public.
“Did you pay good money for the rips in those jeans?” He asked one day when I was getting dressed to go to a job interview.
“No. They are just old. And one sudden movement away from becoming curtains.”
On the random occasions that I have been forced to go somewhere formal, I feel like a lady if I remember to wear underwear and look in awe at the women who know how to curl their hair.

Sometimes I wish I was one of those girls who can wear white and not spill on it or spend an entire day concreting (or similar) and never get a hair out of place. Instead, I buy cheap white shirts because I know that with my hand-eye-coordination they are going to have the life span of about six weeks. I once believed by friend when She told me that girls get their hair shiny by putting glue in it.
“How can someone who understands Logical Mathematics get herself into this situation?” AM asked, perplexed, as she massaged conditioner into my head to save my hair from being shaved off.

When Mary-Kate Olsen started dressing as a hobo, I felt like someone finally understood me.
“I want to be a bag lady,” I told hairdressers when they tried to put something called conditioner into my hair. They would always avert their eyes to my ironic Fendi bag and misinterpret my instruction.
I loved that there was a female ambassador for looking like a derelict and when She landed on the front cover of Vogue, I officially threw away soap.
“This is nothing to be proud of,” AM scoffed.
Meanwhile, I relaxed in a university lecture wearing tracksuit pants and three hundred dollar shoes.
“It doesn’t make sense,” she shook her head.
Some things are beyond logic.

One of my biggest fears about growing up (aside from an increasing age gap between me and twenty-year-old boys) is the idea that We have to dress our age. I get flustered when I am told that certain aspects of appearance are age specific and it is not acceptable to wear a cartoon T-shirt to work. I could not be told what to wear as an infant, so an employer doesn’t have a shot in Hell of convincing me that a uniform is more appropriate. If I had a Fairy Godmother, I would ask her to destroy the concept of acceptable dressing instantly because Lady GaGa’s efforts are taking too long and I may have to seek employment long before it is universally acceptable to not wear pants.

I was holding onto a bar after drinking too much at it when a boy approached me. He was wearing a suit and had shiny hair.
“Are you wearing a parka and high heels at the same time?” He asked.
“Yes I am.”
“OK,” he looked me up and down. “It kind of looks stupid.”
He asked for permission to buy me a drink but I refused.
Life is too short to spend time with people who will judge a book by its cover.