Tuesday, July 15, 2014

when I remember

Do your remember Jelly Shoes and Jelly Bracelets? Neon and glitter? Huge hair bows? Big baggy sweat tops and perms gone wrong? That was the 80's. I had two little girls then and I'm sure they remember all of those things, some with a wistful sigh and some with a shudder.
I was a child in the sixties.
We wore lime green fishnet stockings, the Wet Look shoes, and pedal pushers and pop tops. Not all at the same time of course. I think pedal pushers have a fifties sound to them but then, I grew up in Blue River, that town time forgot.
I remember getting a pair of red shorts and a pop top the year I was six. The shorts had a wonderful pom pom fringe around the bottom edge and the top was printed with red tulips.  I loved that set. Of course, my mother, practically minded as she was, bought me clothes to grow into and so that first summer, the summer I was six, my pop top didn't really pop. It lapped modestly over the top of my shorts. My baggy red shorts.
The next summer, the top had crept a smidge higher and the fabric had softened nicely.
I think the top had a fringe around the bottom edge too and by the next summer, it was just brushing the waistband of my shorts.
By the next summer, my pop top was at last a genuine pop top.
I'd shot up but not out, just as my mother suspected I would.
I never grew out of that set.
I wore it out.
I imagine that's why I can remember it still.
It's what I see myself wearing when I remember summer.

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