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Every Life is a Story
    A place to share my own family stories

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Wearing the Green

I know, this is coming two days too late, but I'm sharing it anyway.

In my closet hangs a shirt that only gets used once a year. It's my St. Patrick's Day shirt, and it's ONLY for St. Patrick's Day. That's because it's SO VERY green.

A long time ago, it was actually an article of clothing I wore on a regular basis. When I was in high school, it was the 80's, and neon became popular. We saw a lot of neon colored clothes, socks, hair things, and bright colors were the norm. I lived out in California, and my mother would take us clothes shopping out in San Francisco at all of the clothing outlets. This was before outlet malls were popular, so when you looked for outlets, you were seriously looking through the warehouse district of the city. One of our favorite outlet stores was the Esprit outlet. It was the first outlet that looked more like a store than an old warehouse, and Esprit was the brand of clothes that all the in-style girls and boys wore. One of the outfits I got was a black skirt with poison-green neon plaid design on it, and a matching oversized shirt to go with it. Paired with a black shirt, that outfit turned heads. Because it was so bright.

I wore my poison-green outfit to work, to church, and to school. Eventually, however, style trends changed, I went to college and gained that "Freshman 15" everyone was talking about, and I had to retire the dress. The shirt was just too perfect to give away, though. It was oversized so I could still wear it, and I knew that nowhere on the planet would I ever find a shirt that color of green ever again. I was right. I have worn my green shirt every St. Patricks Day ever since. It was able to still fit me through gaining much more than the "Freshman 15" and losing it all again. It was able to survive several moves, children, and all of the other activities life gives us.

I put on my shirt a few days ago for it's annual unveiling, and ran to the school to provide treats for my daughter's class. I had comments follow me all through the hallway.

"Wow, that is REALLY green!"

"Did you see her shirt?"

"Look at you, green lady!"

Yup. It still works. One of these days, I'll have to get a picture of it, but I'm afraid it will break the camera....

Monday, March 2, 2009

More Dungeons and Dragons

I mentioned I got started playing Dungeons and Dragons back in the seventh grade. By ninth grade I was done playing. That was it, fad over. There wasn't anyone to play with, and I was busy with other things.

Then we moved.

We moved from a tiny rural town in Oregon to a BIG town in California. The number of students in the high school was dizzying, and culture shock set in immediately. In an effort to try to feel comfort at this strange turn of events, I decided to hide by requesting a seat in the back of the room in my Math class- where the other back corner students were playing Dungeons and Dragons after they finished their Math assignments!

My people!

We really weren't regular players, but we would get together occasionally to run through a big adventure, then take a break for awhile. We played other games too- board games, murder mystery games, and card games. It didn't matter. What did matter was that I was a little town fish tossed into some very big water, and Dungeons and Dragons was a link to friends- many of whom I am still in contact with.

I DID eventually decide that the back corner of the room in Math class wasn't what I needed to get a good grade, and was back up near the front for Trigonometry the next year. Ah well.

"To be a person
is to have a story to tell."

- Isak Dinesen  

 
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