Does anyone really like going to class reunions? This was my tenth anniversary since graduating from high school, way before the days of Facebook and social media. Seeing as we had three youngsters, one of whom was only a couple of months old, I had been very busy, too busy to worry about a lot of things. I felt fat, frumpy, and wasn't sure I wanted to face my classmates who hadn't seen me in 50 pounds or so. But I signed up anyway, paying out the nose for Ken and I to attend. I don't know why they do these events this way: they bring in liquor, a DJ that plays the music way too loud, cheap food that isn't cheap, and in a hotel that ends up costing an arm and a leg. This was the only one I've ever gone to. I have decided that if I want to hang out with old friends from high school, we'll meet up at the barbecue joint in town, where we can hear each other talk and don't feel compelled to drink and dance in front of each other.
Suffice it to say, it was too late to do anything about the Mommy body, but there's always the hair. My Mama agreed to pull my long, stringy mess through a cap and frost it. A little lightening, a little brightening and maybe it might distract from the lower fourty. I know a lot of you ladies have had that old-school experience where somebody takes a rubber cap with little holes all over it, they squeeze it tightly onto your head then extort small batches of hair through it with a crochet hook. That takes an hour, and then there's another hour of processing and pulling off the cap. It sounds barbaric and it is barbaric. I had to nurse the baby while the goop was on, so it took longer than usual. So from either the heat or the hormones, when the cap came off, my hair was the consistency of overcooked vermicelli. White as cotton and melted.
I said there ain't no way I'm going to the prom, reunion, whatever you want to call it. My Daddy was there and said, let me help. He called the beauty parlor and Mama and he rode up there with me and the kids. I had wrapped a towel around the mess before I left the house. There was no way anybody was seeing me like this. Once I was seated at a station and unwound the turban, the beautician said "Honey, I'm not touching that with a ten-foot pole. You'll have to come back tomorrow, when our color specialist is here." I made sure I was dead asleep when my husband came home at midnight after his shift that night, and I slipped out early to see the "specialist." He chopped a lot of my hair off and persuaded me to spend a boatload of money on products that promised to heal my hair in a few months. Meanwhile, I was pretty sure I still wasn't going to that reunion. That afternoon, I trolled over to my parents' house. They wanted to see if I still had any hair. I got there and started crying. It was still white, even though it had a nice, fluffy cut. Daddy said we needed to head on over to Rich's department store. To town, to town, to buy a fat dress.
So we did. I found a gorgeous, royal blue formal and bought a whole set of jewelry to go with it. New shoes too. We actually did go to the soiree, where Ken promptly split his pants and had to go back home for another pair (you can't make this stuff up). He left, then I ducked into the hotel bathroom, where they had a big, beautiful lounge area. I kept running into one friend and then another and another, until an hour and a half had passed with us having a nice party right there in the ladies' room. We laughed and talked, like no time had gone by. The dinner was good, then more of us crowded in the back so we could hear each other talk. We gabbed for hours and had a grand time.
So Flossie Mae, with her white cotton hair, perty party dress, thoughts of Elvis coursing through her mind, had the most wonderful night ever, thanks to Ma and Pa, Ken and the McEachern class of 1978. The Mommy body? Pshaw...
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