When I was a kid, I hated wearing dresses since they interfered with my fun. I got sick of hearing” Keep your dress tail down.” “Girls don’t…..” “Sit with your knees together.” “Fix your clothes. Your dress is over your head!” I should have paid more attention to that last one.

Back in the good old days before anybody cared about safety, our school playground had one of those towering slides that a kid could actually fall off of and kill himself if he weren’t careful. All of us were competitively seeking death, so every one of those twenty-plus steps had a couple of kids jostling for position. I had become socially aware enough to hold my dress down having experienced the boys on the ground sing out that ever popular ditty.

“I see London.
I see France.
I see Linda’s underpants!”

Anyway, when I finally got my turn, knowing dawdling was not tolerated, I quickly tucked my skirt tail safely under me as the kid behind me gave me a shove. I felt a tug at my waist and heard that deadly ripping sound that signaled that, once again, I had destroyed yet another item of clothing, big trouble at home.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees!”

Before I’d processed all that, I heard ecstatic laughter of thrilled kids. I flew off the bottom of the slide, shocked to find myself standing in only my slip and the tattered remains of my dress bodice. The joyous boys were sing songing and pointing out the remains of my skirt fluttering from the top of the slide.

Fully expecting the teacher would contrive some method of dispatching me homeward, I was devastated when the pragmatic old lady wrapped my skirt around me, bath-towel style and pinned it to my slip with gigantic safety pins, instructing me, “Put your sweater on. This will do till you get home.” That was the first time I ever wished for another dress.

By the close of of school, my dilemma no longer interested my class, but the bus ride home afforded the raucous riders plenty to hoot about. I burst in the door at home, seeking solace. Before I could even launch into my suffering, Mother beat me too it. “Oh no! You’ve torn up another dress! That’s the first time you wore it! Money doesn’t grow on trees!”

I don’t know why she didn’t just send me to school wearing a barrel.