 |
| On our shopping list: a black dress – because Penny doesn't want to be showy |
One downside to the girls having been born three years apart has made itself apparent.
Both Dora and Penny are graduating this year – meaning this pressured Pop faces the trauma of grad-dress shopping twice over.
It's not something that should be left to the last minute (as I learn from leaving it to the last minute).
My preliminary inquiries – aka frantic calls to my mother – teach me that the task requires careful consideration of the following points (maternal advice in italics):
My bid to add cost to the list leads the girls to question their pop's ability to grasp the importance of the occasion.
“You just don’t get it,” they scream. How could I think about money when their reputations will be on the line as they strut across the stage to take their ribboned scrolls?
Penny gets my initial attention because her ceremony is just days away. At 10, she's moving from elementary to middle, and her school has ruled the girls wear a dress or skirt for the occasion.
Problem One: Penny turned hostile to wearing dresses and skirts at age seven, opting for shorts (hot days), leggings (mild days), and pants (cold days).
It's just not PC* for the school to demand that the girls go dressed as – of all things – GIRLS (traditionally attired ones, at least).
If there's any group that will react to a charge of being unPC, it’s the teacher establishment.
I decide to write to the principal to insist the rule be scrapped in the name of gender equality/freedom of expression/kids' rights (the principal can take her pick).
It seems like a great plan. But – as my Scottish mother's favorite poet, Robbie Burns, warned in his poem To a Mouse – even great planning can be knocked off track.
Actually, his exact Scots words were: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."
Yes, I thought you'd like that I give it in standard English first.
What goes "agley" for my plan is that Penny does an about-face. Resurrecting her fear that any intervention by her Dad embarrasses her, she declares she'll go in a dress after all.
Worse, she says she doesn't want to be showy, so the dress has to be black.
Problem Two: Department store inventory managers aren't known for stocking black dresses in kids’ sections on the eve of summer. Something about black costumes being associated with wicked witches, funerals and fiends like Dracula, I should think.
Indeed, in mall after mall, we find kids’ dresses in a kaleidoscope of cheery colors all screaming summery fun.
Black, however, remains true to its definition as the "absence of color" – and is absent from the stores’ collective proclamation of estival joy.
Both Dora and Penny are graduating this year – meaning this pressured Pop faces the trauma of grad-dress shopping twice over.
It's not something that should be left to the last minute (as I learn from leaving it to the last minute).
My preliminary inquiries – aka frantic calls to my mother – teach me that the task requires careful consideration of the following points (maternal advice in italics):
- The girls’ tastes: If I like a dress, the girls won’t, and if the girls like a dress, I won’t. Only option to keep the peace: capitulate.
- The tastes of their friends: To impress this crowd, the dress must be unique and conformist at the same time. Since the two are mutually exclusive, we'll never impress the friends.
- The edicts of the schools: Best to go along to get along, or join the PTA and spend a year organizing fund raisers just to have a chance at influencing the rules as they are made.
- The possibility a final choice will clash with a fellow student’s choice: If accused of copying, flip the charge and say we’re shocked that we’re being copied!
My bid to add cost to the list leads the girls to question their pop's ability to grasp the importance of the occasion.
“You just don’t get it,” they scream. How could I think about money when their reputations will be on the line as they strut across the stage to take their ribboned scrolls?
Focus
Penny gets my initial attention because her ceremony is just days away. At 10, she's moving from elementary to middle, and her school has ruled the girls wear a dress or skirt for the occasion.
Problem One: Penny turned hostile to wearing dresses and skirts at age seven, opting for shorts (hot days), leggings (mild days), and pants (cold days).
Of course, it's a dad's job to find solutions (especially ones that relieve his workload). The obvious solution here: Cry discrimination.
It's just not PC* for the school to demand that the girls go dressed as – of all things – GIRLS (traditionally attired ones, at least).
If there's any group that will react to a charge of being unPC, it’s the teacher establishment.
I decide to write to the principal to insist the rule be scrapped in the name of gender equality/freedom of expression/kids' rights (the principal can take her pick).
It seems like a great plan. But – as my Scottish mother's favorite poet, Robbie Burns, warned in his poem To a Mouse – even great planning can be knocked off track.
Actually, his exact Scots words were: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley."
Yes, I thought you'd like that I give it in standard English first.
What goes "agley" for my plan is that Penny does an about-face. Resurrecting her fear that any intervention by her Dad embarrasses her, she declares she'll go in a dress after all.
Worse, she says she doesn't want to be showy, so the dress has to be black.
Problem Two: Department store inventory managers aren't known for stocking black dresses in kids’ sections on the eve of summer. Something about black costumes being associated with wicked witches, funerals and fiends like Dracula, I should think.
Indeed, in mall after mall, we find kids’ dresses in a kaleidoscope of cheery colors all screaming summery fun.
Black, however, remains true to its definition as the "absence of color" – and is absent from the stores’ collective proclamation of estival joy.
As success evades us, I can sense Penny’s rising frustration, so I lead her to the young women’s sections, where there are indeed a few black dresses.
Alas, they're all too big, leading Penny to declare: “This is the worst day of my life.”
I hold back from breaking the news that she’ll face far more “worst days” as the years mount. Instead, I accept that this one signals she's done for the day, and switch my focus to Dora.
Mall
Dresses and skirts have always been a part of her sartorial tastes, so surely she'll pick an outfit with relative ease for her transition from middle to high school.
Problem Three: To find time to search, Dora insists on canceling all her upcoming appointments that don't animate her personally.
Just weeks ago, a doctor prescribed physical therapy for Dora to treat a sports injury to her foot. With the immediate pain now gone, she says she can't make her next session because, as she puts it: “When am I going to shop?”
Dora also insists on skipping an award ceremony hosted by the test-prep school that helped her pass for entry into her next destination: New York’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School.
Without having been to any such ceremony before, she somehow knows it will be “boring” (that must be her Stuyvesant brain that's giving her such intuition), and argues her time would be better spent in a mall.
So to the central challenge: How to persuade both girls to stop fussing and just get on with the task of buying a just-right dress.
My trying to force the issue through discipline is a non-starter, since there are only so many times I can take away their computer/iPad/iPod privileges. But my giving into their every whim is not working either.
As usual, this Pop is perplexed…
* PC: abbreviation for Pious Cynicism (well, it often amounts to that)
No comments:
Post a Comment