Thursday, December 09, 2004

Why I break out in a sweat at the sight of a Reese's Cup, although I am not allergic.

I never wear white jeans.

Fashion experts will rejoice, since white jeans are hardly in style. And even when they were, they weren't exactly cool.

Those who are into aesthetics will rejoice also; white jeans make large objects appear even larger than they actually are.

It's not for either of those reasons, though. Those who know me, know that neither fashion or aesthetics dictate my clothing-of-choice. My daughter will also vouch for my complete lack of clothing taste. As Gilda used to say, and I pimped it for one of my banners, "I base most of my fashion sense on what doesn't itch."

Yes, that pretty much sums it up.

But the white jeans aversion goes back much further than that.

The thought of white jeans reminds me of a teenage experience that still haunts my infrequent sleep.

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and I was fourteen, I went bowling with a big group of teenagers, one of whom was a cute boy. Well, looking back, there were several cute boys in that group but only one CUTE BOY, if you know what I mean.

Hey, I can still remember hormones, if I try hard enough.

Every time I got up to bowl, the CUTE BOY would smile and point to me and whisper to his friends. Naturally I assumed he had noticed my beauty and my figure and my skill in bowling my third 72 game in a row. He was looking at my smile, and the way my long hair flipped up over my collar. The collar of my blue shirt. My blue shirt, worn with my tight white jeans. Yes, he was looking at all those things. He was looking at meee, and pointing me out to his friends because he liked my looks, and my smile, and my sense of humor, and soon he would ask me for a date, and we would be dropped off at the movies by our sighing parents and sit together in the dark theater and he would reach for my hand and I would die of sheer happiness.

The reality was different, though. The reality was, that he couldn't take his eyes off my blindingly white jeans because there was a big Reese's cup stuck to my ass. Every time I got up to bowl, the round brown crinkly-edged spot was bigger. They were taking bets as to when it would finally drop off. I think the CUTE BOY was the winner. Nobody told me I was sporting a huge brown circle in the middle of my butt till we were getting ready to leave.

I had sat down on a Reese's Cup early in the game, and every time I bent to bowl it stretched bigger, and every time I sat down it smashed bigger.

Why didn't I FEEL the thing there?

Why didn't somebody TELL me it was there?

My girlfriends said they didn't tell me because if they had, and we had washed it off in the restroom, it would have looked like I wet my pants.

Oh, so that's worse than looking like I was wearing a leaky poopy diaper in front of CUTE BOY, right?

I think they only told me about it at all, so I wouldn't smear chocolate on the seat of someone's dad's car.

On a brighter note, CUTE BOY eventually did ask me out. He always brought up the subject of Reese's Cups, but I forgave him because of his cuteness.

A few years later, he asked me to prom. I didn't go. Somehow he wasn't as cute as he used to be.

I think there are pictures of my white ass with the brown chocolate circle, floating out 'there' somewhere. My friends were great at taking pictures, and I definitely heard "clicks" behind me almost every time I bowled. I've never seen one, though.

Even at my age now, I don't think my self-esteem could take it.

That is the saga of my aversion to white jeans. I much prefer colors that would help conceal any possible Reese's Cup accidents.

The end.