I have a s**tload to do today, and it's 4 p.m., and I have nothing related to my schoolwork done yet. Instead, I have been scouring my apartment...
And... wrapping a baby shower gift (yes, another one), as well as spending approximately two hours hunched over my Virginia state tax forms trying to figure out if I qualify for a "net fixed date conformity modification" or a "fixed date conformity FAGI" (which I have been reading as "faggy," as I have no freaking clue what the hell it means). I finally decided that I didn't qualify for the first option, but my "FAGI" appears to be the same as my adjusted gross income from my form 1040, thus the "AGI" of the faggy.
When I Google image searched "faggy," Robert Smith's picture popped up (uhhh, just in case you don't know, he's the lead singer of "The Cure"). I loved them in my teen years, and he is not faggy either, well, except for that red lipstick he always wears.
But thinking about the Cure reminds me that I talked to Miguel for a while on the phone this morning about the always humorous subject of 1980s clothing -- you know... leg warmers, stirrup pants, side ponytails, Michael Jackson jackets, Club Beverly Hills, and so on.
As if growing up with 80s fashions wasn't bad enough, we discovered that we doubly suffered as a result of parents who refused to buy us brand name garments (I remember hearing something about "character building"), and we were often the victims of bad knock-offs... for example:
All of the cool kids had "Polo" shirts (with collars flipped up of course):
See that little horse logo up close on the right? That meant that you were cool.
However, Miguel's parents and my parents bought us "Hunt Club" shirts from JC Penney:
Almost like a "Polo" shirt, but the horse was facing the other direction, and it didn't have a rider. This was not so cool.
Similarly, "Keds" white canvas tennis shoes were supremely cool for girls, especially when worn without laces or with thick scrunchy socks:
However, I remember my dad found me a pair of "Keds"-look-alikes at People's drug store (now CVS). True, they did look a lot like Keds, but they had a pointier toe (not the cool rounded Keds front) and they were missing the requisite "Keds" blue tag on the back of the shoe, like this:
So I got a blue pen and colored a fake "Keds" rectangle on the back. I wonder if I actually fooled any myopic people?
And how about the old "Eastland" shoe? An equally cool alternative brand was "Sebago," where you had to curly-cue the laces on the sides of the shoes:
These were quite the rage. Unfortunately, my pair (sans brand name tag) were from Kinney.
Only at Christmas would I get to experience brand-name ecstasy, when my grandparents would send me Guess jeans, Forenza sweatshirts, and Outback Red blouses...
My grandma once took me to TJ Maxx and bought me a pair of jeans with this label on the back right pocket, and I assure you that I wore those things at least three times a week.
Lest I give my parents too hard a time (after all, my mother reads this blog and will certainly call me saying, "We didn't neglect you! You had lovely clothes!") or you begin to think I was Dolly Dorkykins in my adolescence, I will say that my parents did get me three different pairs of "real" Tretorns throughout junior high and high school that I absolutely loved:
I had this pair (plaid) as well as a pink pair and a royal blue pair.
Pause... Phone Ringing... Added note:
I just talked to my mom on the phone, and she says, "You were not a dork in high school, even if you didn't wear brand names. Your father and I just felt that it was materialistic, unnecessary, and expensive to get you those type of clothes. You always looked very cute and stylish!"
My response: "Yeah, in my Kinney and Thom McAn fake shoes, and my faux drugstore Keds with the hand drawn label. Sure, I was super cool."
My mom: "Would you rather that we had bought you those expensive clothes and not paid for college?"
Hmmm, OK, I'll shut up now.
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