If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (10 page)

Know which shows have oxygen and which ones expect you to be a sport about a coronary. Remember, there is no jubilance and excitement in passing out. Learn how to stay on your feet.

LOOK LIKE A LOSER TO THE IRS

Handy tips on how to stagger by the IRS men carrying a bag of gold and still hang on to your citizenship.

Remember, game shows can hurt you. Be a pro!

What a shame. It'll be too late for Bernice.

10

Fashions and Fads That Underwhelmed Me

You always hear about fashion's success stories.

How a starlet lost an earring one night and by the next morning, the entire country was wearing one earring. Or how sweaters made a comeback in a drugstore, or a First Lady influenced how we dressed during her reign.

But what about the losers?The fashions that came in and went out the same day? The hopes and dreams of designers that were shattered by the sound of fifty million women... laughing themselves to death.

Some styles, for one reason or another, just don't make it.

Remember the Scratch and Smell T-shirt? This should have been a smash. The principle was great. You scratched and voila... a scent was circulated that ran the gamut from perfume to pizza. Unfortunately, there were too many impostors. People scratched for status and stirred up only perspiration. This gave the official scratch and smell shirt a bad name... not to mention the smell.

And what about the Gladiator boots. Remember them? They were the polished leather boots that hit just above the knee. You could look stylish in them or sit down. You couldn't do both.

The Diaper Bikini would have been a real seller if the wearers had been able to keep their weight down to eight-and-a-half pounds.

And the Fanny Sweater was a big loser. This was one of the many knit styles designed to fit a hanger and not the human body. The name was deceiving. It suggested that everyone who had a fanny should cover it with a sweater. In many instances, that's all the sweater covered and the sides and front were left wide open.

The Satin Pillow stomach just didn't make it. A few years ago, the manufacturer actually came out with a fake satin stomach that you tied around your waist for those girls who wanted to look healthy.

I looked so healthy in it, two men on the bus hoisted me into their seats and another called the police to report I was in the final stages of delivery. (The fake stomach now resides on the living room sofa.)

If there was ever a loser, however, it was the jumpsuit. This one-piece apparel has to be the Brand X of the fashion industry.

By actual count, there are only six women in the country who looked well in a jumpsuit. Five of them were terminal and the other was sired by a Xerox machine.

Just out of curiosity, I was rummaging through a rack of jumpsuits when a saleswoman approached and asked, “Which size are you looking for? Twelve? Fourteen? Sixteen?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Which?” she pursued.

“All three. My bust is twelve, my waist is a fourteen, and my hips are 16.”

“Try the fourteen,” she said dryly. “The fitting room is behind better dresses.”

The fitting room was something I had never seen before. It was a community deal... a large room with sixteen mirrors on the wall, a rack in the center to hang discards and a woman by the door to make sure you didn't wear out anymore than you wore in.

Now a fitting room to me has always been like a confessional... where my body and my contrition take up the entire room. There is no room for anyone else. I looked around. All eyes seemed to be focused on one woman. She weighed about six pounds and was trying on a jumpsuit. It slid on easily, up over her hips and onto her arms. I winced as she distributed the cloth left over around her waist.

The crowd could not take their eyes off her. I had seen that look of resentment and pain on only one other occasion. It was a Charlton Heston movie just before the door slid back between the Christians and the Lions.

Inching closer, I whispered, “Lady, you better get out of here before they tear you to shreds.”

It was my turn. For fifteen minutes, I tugged and inched my way into the jumpsuit and looked into the mirror. The chest was disguised as a back, the stomach strained at the buttons, the legs were numb without circulation and the hems swirled around the floor.

“How do you...”

“You swear off liquids after 4 p.m.,” she said.

Or what about the platform shoes that brought about dizziness and nose bleeds? Also a broken leg to a thirteen-year-old girl in England, who fell off them.

Why the first time I tried on a pair of those Klutzies, I said to myself, “These shoes should have a label in them that reads, ‘Warning: according to the Surgeon General's Office, these could be injurious to your health.’”

I always thought platform shoes were something Alan Ladd wore to make kissing easier. Then I saw them on a woman who frequents my beauty shop. At first, I tried to ignore her deformity (Mother always said, “Don't stare. They know where their problem is located”). Finally, she said, “What do you think of my wedgies?”

“I know you can walk on water in them,” I said, “But what else can you do?”

“Surely you jest,” she said. “For a short person such as yourself, it could change your world. They can raise you off the ground, stretch out your body and make you look twenty pounds thinner. How tall are you? And how much do you weigh?”

I had no intention of giving her my vital statistics. “Let me put it this way,” I said. “According to my girth, I should be a ninety-foot redwood.”

“So, you need platforms,” she said.

The first pair I tried on felt great. I wiggled my toes and they sprang back like a released arrow. My ankles felt firm and I felt tall.

Then I stood up.

Easing my way across the floor, I looked into a mirror. The reflection looked like Milton Berle with a migraine.

“How come you look so funny?” asked one of my children.

“Don't talk to me,” I snapped. “I am busy keeping my shoes on.”

In five minutes, I felt pain. In the back of my legs, running up my hips and finally down to my toes. Within an hour, my heels were purple and my toes felt like they were being pushed through a ballpoint pen.

. The physical pain is nothing when you consider that the shoes cost eighteen dollars and that I don't throw a pair away until the soles are worn thin... and the soles are four-inches thick and by the time I get out of those orthopedic nightmares, I'll be a petrified redwood!

There is one fashion that never really comes in style and never seems to go out. Each year, some designer comes out with the organized handbag. Now, I am not into organized handbags. Let me put it another way. If Monty Hall had offered a million dollars to anyone having a 1958 baby tooth, a set of keys to a three-year-old car, a fuzzy breath mint, and a half pair of footlets in their purse, I'd be a millionaire today.

As with most vices, the only people this bothers are the reformers. The people who want to make organized handbags into law. They're the do-gooders who won't rest until you put your car keys on a clip with a flashlight at the top of the bag in a spot marked “KEYS.”

Actually, one of the more zealous members of the Organized Handbag Movement is my mother. She cannot comprehend why I carry around a pack of gum with no gum in it, or what possible use I will have for two “C” batteries. For my birthday, she couldn't wait to give me one of those handbags that has a place for everything. It looked like a Post Office.

“The first thing we're going to do is to sit down and get it all organized,” she said, “and you'll never have to rummage through your purse again. Give me your checkbook.”

“I don't have it,” I said. “I just carry a few blank checks.”

“What do you record them on when you have written them?”

“My grocery tape.”

“Where do you keep the grocery tape?”

“In the brown bags where I get my groceries.”

“And they are...?”

“Under the sink waiting for the garbage.”

“I see. Well now, where's your passport?”

“My what?”

“Your passport. You know, permission to enter a foreign country.”

“I only use it when I enter your grandson's bedroom.”

“And here's a bag for your makeup. Where is that?”

“I'm wearing it.”

“Look,” she said, “why don't you fill up all these little pockets and openings yourself and surprise me.”

A few days later she saw the handbag and began to check it out. I had put all my raffle tickets under traveler's checks, my hair clips and single earrings under club affiliations, the trading stamps jammed in the passport pocket, a pair of fake eyelashes under major credit cards and two worn-out washers that I have to replace were in the makeup bag.

As I told her, “I hope you're happy now. I won't be able to find a thing.”

Another trend I cannot bear that is destined to race to oblivion is the name-dropping signatures that adorn everything you wear these days. I know a lot of women (two) who walk around looking like billboards. Their bags carry the Gucci signature, their scarves spell out Yves Saint-Laurent, and their blouses have the name of Wayne Rogers incorporated in the design.

I never know who makes my clothes. Whoever they are, they're too ashamed to sign 'em. The closest I ever came to finding out was when I shook a pair of slacks one day and a little piece of paper fell out: “inspected by 56.” I have no idea who 56 is, or where she came from, but by wearing the slacks, I got a mental picture of inspector 56. She was a former designer for an awning company until her vision started to go. When she could no longer see to attach a zipper to a tent flap, she was put in slacks. She regards slacks like a tent... one size fits all.

I tried to track her down, but I heard she changed her name to Inspector 94. Like I say, it doesn't bother me a bit that kids walk around in Hang Ten sweat sox with the two little feet emblem, or flaunt Levi labels coming out of their seams, but my friend is a real status seeker.

At lunch one day she gasped, “Did you see that! Violet is wearing a LANVIN blouse.”

“How can you tell?”

“If you just read her chest, you can tell,” she said.

“That's shabby. If people can't look at my clothes and by their style and cut know who designed them, I'm certainly not going to advertise.”

“Don't give me that,” she snapped. “If your dresses had a perma-press label in them, you'd wear them wrong-side out.”

That was a pretty rotten accusation from a woman I personally knew sat up nights drawing penguins on her husband's golf shirts. Like I told her, “You're such a snob it would serve you right if you got stuck with one of those fifty-dollar handbags that came out about a year ago. It seems a couple of designers subtly included an eight letter noun with an obscene word woven into the pat-.tern. English-speaking women didn't have any idea that the word was smutty.”

As my friend counted the letters out on her fingers, she exclaimed, “You don't have to tell me the word... just nod your head if I'm right. It's J.C. Penney, isn't it?”

“It is not J.C. Penney.”

“You know the trouble with you,” said my friend, “is that you're not open 'to new fashion trends. It takes a lot of courage to be different and you don't have the guts. Why, I bet you've never worn a bathrobe to a party, have you?”

“Not since the night I had my appendix taken out on the coffee table.”

“Barbara Walters did,” she said. “She was invited to a state dinner in the Philippines. The dinner was to begin in ten minutes and Barbara had not brought along a long dress. She was about to decline when she remembered she had a red bathrobe that would work, and saved the day. How does that make you feel?”

“Sick to my stomach.”

I don't have a bathrobe in my drawer that would get me through an eighth-grade prom... or a house call from my doctor for that matter. Somehow, I cannot imagine myself showing up for a state dinner at the Philippines in a pair of blue scuffles, a flannel robe with a stomach button missing, spit-up on the shoulder (the baby is eighteen years old) and pockets bulging from nose tissue that smells like vapor-rub.

I even took a turn the other day through the lingerie department, and frankly I can see how they got away with it. I've never seen so many beautiful gowns and robes in my entire life.

“Here's one that's a luv,” said the salesperson.

She held up a satin gown. (The last time I saw anything that narrow, there was toothpaste in it.)

“I'm afraid not. I have made it a rule of thumb that I do not wear anything to bed I have to wear a girdle under.”

“What about this one?” she asked holding up a transparent bit of nylon.

“I have also promised myself that I would never wear anything in bed that you had to wear a coat over.”

“What did you have in mind?” she asked.

“Something with sleeves, a turtleneck... and a zip-in floor.”

Then she held up a robe. I have to tell you it was a knockout. “I'll take it,” I said impishly.

Last weekend, I took the plunge and decided to wear it as an evening dress. Maybe my friend was right. As I entered the room... all eyes were upon me when my husband looked up and said, “Hurry up and get dressed. We're leaving in ten minutes.”

There were other “losers” of course too numerous to mention. Who could forget the tube dress designed for the woman who wanted to be mailed somewhere, or the oriental look that lasted as long as our diplomatic relations with China lasted, or the pierced ears fad. I knew that would never last.

My daughter was crazy to have it done and I couldn't talk her out of it. I told her, “If the operation was so simple. Good Housekeeping would have put out a kit on it.”

We both went to the department store jewelry counter where they had a chair for the puncturee.

“I'll watch,” I said.

When I came to, my head was in Baked Goods and my feet in Better Sportswear."

“Is it over?” I gasped.

“Yes,” said my daughter, “you did fine. You passed out just after you asked the anesthesiologist what kind of anesthetic he used and he turned out to be the jewelry buyer. See my earrings?”