PLAID

I was shopping around online a few days ago and I saw this fabulous pink plaid miniskirt, which I fell in love with immediately. I looked to see if they had it in my size, which they did, and I went to click “Add to Shopping Cart,” then thought again. I gave it another hard look. Aw, crap. I can’t wear that anymore. I would look silly. I tried to think of a way to old it up, and just could not. Huge sigh. It was so cute.

I like plaid things, although not all plaid things. Plaid golf pants are not appealing, nor are plaid bedsheets. I like bold plaids. I had two special red plaid things when I was little: tennis shoes and a bookbag. The tennies had the big white rubber bumper toes, and big white rubber soles, and I think I got them at the Buster Brown shoe store. No one else seemed to have them, and I wore them until they had holes and I couldn’t cram my little toes in them any more. They were different, and I really dug feeling different, even then.

The red plaid bookbag came from England, which made it beyond special and groovy. If you do not know what bookbags are, these were the precursors to backpacks, worn like a current-day laptop bag/purse style. They were generally very cheap and thin. Oh, how I loved this bag, even though I really had nothing but the Weekly Reader to put in it, in the days before any homework of consequence for young children. It was trimmed out in black leather, with a thin strap and two big buckles to close it shut. The inside was this orange rubberized material which seemed related to a basketball. It got dry and cracked apart as the years went by, and fell apart like the tennis shoes. Perhaps plaid is unreliable, or maybe I loved them to death.

I’ll tell you a bad plaid: The Bay City Rollers. Oh mah gawd, what was THAT? Trying to pass off a bunch of pasty, zitty Scottish boys with buckteeth and CROPPED PLAID PANTS as teen idols? Well maybe for the equally-pasty ginger-haired befreckled pudgy lasses over there but THIS IS THE USA, DAMMIT! S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y! NO WAY! They were a POX on my PLAID!

Maybe I will get the hot pink plaid skirt and wear it around the house when no one is here. Win.