My husband, Frank, and I are eating sandwiches for a quick workday Wednesday lunch. Our conversation wanders through events of the morning until Frank asks, “What’s up with Cabell’s clothes?”
I pause before answering. Cabell is our 12 year old son and “Cabell’s clothes” is a broad topic. I’m not sure which portion of this topic Frank intends to tackle. “What do you mean?” I ask cautiously.
This morning he wouldn’t wear his white tennis shoes because they were a little dirty,” Frank explains. “Then while we’re driving to school he pulls out this white t-shirt. He says that he isn’t happy with the short-sleeved gray t-shirt that he is wearing underneath his long-sleeved red t-shirt. While we’re driving he takes off the red shirt and the gray shirt and starts to put on the white shirt. Just before he puts it on he notices a tiny hole at the back of the neck of the shirt and says, ‘well, I can’t wear that.’ I say to him, ‘Cabell, that little hole is not a problem.’ Do you know that he ended up wearing the white shirt on the bottom, the gray shirt over that to cover up the hole and then the long-sleeved red shirt on top?”
“Well,” I chuckle, “That is a bit ridiculous. I have noticed that he is more particular about his clothes than he used to be.”
“But,” Frank replies, “He’s not particular about some of his clothes. He wears his boxers to sleep in at night and then just drops them on the floor every morning when he steps into the shower. This morning I picked up a whole week’s worth of boxers in the bathroom.”
“At least they were dirty,” I sigh in return. “Lately I have discovered that he’s been wearing certain clothes down to breakfast in the morning. Then, when he goes upstairs after breakfast to brush his teeth he changes his mind about what he wants to wear. He takes off the breakfast clothes, drops them in his clothes hamper and then puts on new clothes for the day. Last night I told him, ‘Cabell, I do a bizillion loads of laundry every week and I just can’t be adding in clothes that are already clean’. For Cabell I’ll have to sort whites, darks and cleans.”
I make the statement that perhaps I was particular about my clothes at that age, too, and now look at how completely practical and easy I am with my daily khakis and cotton shirts. Our lunch conversation drifts on to the plans for soccer and baseball practices for the children this evening.
In my background thoughts I am concerned that perhaps “particular” was not precisely the correct word to describe my 12-year-old clothes problems. At this moment in my mind, I can visualize a photograph someone took of me in the 7th grade. In this photograph I am standing in the hallway of Walton Middle School wearing a dress. It is a beige and brown dress with short sleeves and a short hemline consistent with the miniskirt style of 1971. The problematic part of this ensemble would definitely be the shoes. On that day in 1971 I was wearing brown suede demi-boots. They were shorter than regular boots and somewhere along the genre of majorette boots in height, but more tight fitting to the leg. They laced up the front with brown shoe strings and had a low heel.
I loved these brown “boots” and wore them often with all manner of short-skirts. I also remember the day I was shopping with my dad and bought the brown boots along with a pair of gray suede platform Sunday shoes.
I’m fairly certain that sometime during my 12 year old year my Dad must have said to my Mom, “What’s up with Dugan’s clothes?” She probably didn’t know where to start with that topic either.