Hats, gloves and gowns make you feel special…
Posted August 18th, 2007 by Lori Aulenbach under the category of General+ Increase Font Size | - Decrease Font Size
On the shuttle bus provided by Garden Spot Village twice a month to Park City Center, a shopping mall in Lancaster PA, Michelle, our beloved intern and I met Ida.
Ida reminded me of a Southern gentlewoman – her hair was pinned into curls, and she was decked out in her finest summer cotton print dress, white hose, open-toed sensible sandals and a sparkling white cardigan sweater. Her pocketbook was woven straw and she was the perfect picture of a sophisticated matriarch. Ida said that to her, shopping is therapy, especially this day, as she had just found out that her much younger brother is gravely ill with cancer at 55 years of age and she is feeling both guilty, for being older and yet healthier, and saddened that he is to retire next year from his teaching position and now may never have time to spend with his growing children.
I picture Ida in a sorority at Alabama State. In truth, she lived in Pottstown, Pennsylvania growing up, then moved to New Holland right before high school. Ida dispels the idea that she is a “small town girl,” and it was very important for her to communicate to us that she hated moving to New Holland at that time because it was so much smaller than Pottstown (which in reality is a bitty town, too). It was a burning desire for her as a young woman to leave the tight-knit community where “everyone knows everyone else’s business” never to return. Ironically, here she sits, a Garden Spot Village resident, just a mile from where she graduated from New Holland High School.
We drive by the school and all that is left is rubble on the ground. “They just tore it down to build some business,” Ida says with a bit of disgust apparent in her voice. But then suddenly cheerful she says, “my old school friends and I still get together once a month for lunch and we all bought a brick from the rubble before they got rid of it, for old memories’ sake.” She is a dichotomy. Ida married a man in the Air Force and she was a nurse. She took great pride in her nurse’s uniform and hat and is a little miffed at the quality of nurse’s uniforms today. She’s a little miffed at the quality of attire and fashion in general today.
Ida caught me people watching in the mall later and asked how I was doing. I told her that it had been ages since I had been to a mall and was making note of what people were wearing or buying because I have no idea what’s going to be in this fall season. She agreed that it was good to watch, but that people today dress so casually. Ida shared with me that she has found that the better you are dressed, the more apt a sales clerk is likely to wait on you. Although in general sales clerks don’t make themselves available like she wishes they would to older adults and instead you have to go search them out. She even told me that she feels sorry for today’s young people because they have no where to go to “dress up.” “Hats, gloves, gowns make you feel special, pretty and feminine and younger women today are missing out on it.”
To quote Jimgens blog, “I knew it was bound to happen when big time designers started coming out with underwear bearing (or should I say baring) their labels. I was walking down the sidewalk yesterday and couldn’t help but observe the guy walking in front of me. He was a good fifteen years beyond his teens, but I guess nobody told him. His jeans were down just under his buttocks and his entire butt was sticking out, proudly showing off his briefs with me and anybody else that happened to be looking. Why he would think we wanted to see is beyond my comprehension. In my day, we would die of mortification if the waistband of our Hanes or Jockeys happened to protrude above our belts.
“While I was observing Mr. Wanna C. My Drawers, it reminded me of something. Took me a while to figure out what, though. Then it dawned on me. With those jeans worn down below the buttocks, the seat of the pants fell about knee level sort of satchel-like. Then I recalled my infant son, many years ago, waddling away, his diaper exposing his little Po Po, because of the disgusting load the diaper was carrying. Funny I should think of that. Looking in almost any direction, I saw that young men today have disdained dress shirts and ties for headbands, T-shirts with faded slogans, rubber bracelets, leather necklaces with silver pendants of indeterminant design–all carefully arranged to accent the exposed underwear, I suppose. Maybe it’s just a backlash. Maybe the guys got tired of being the only half of the population covered up. I’ve seen more London and Stars on women lately than I care to. (If you don’t get the London and Stars reference, the jingle ended with “I see someone’s under drawers.”)
Of course I’m dating myself. I’m old. I’ve lived hard for the lines on my face and the sag in my jowls. I’ve enjoyed all those years, but have no desire to live them again–especially those parts that were down right difficult. My generation (what’s left of us) survived without a tooth in our ears and our underwear exposed to the world. And, yes, we had fun!”
