White Gloves

No wonder I am a lapsed Catholic with life-long questionable fashion sense.

Here's the evidence -- poorly photographed, unfortunately.  This is why my standard uniform these days consists of black jeans and blouse. Relieved to have given my Irish Catholic mother's sense of church fashion the old slip, as they say. Forced to don a hat like that, how could one not wear such an expression?

I do believe this photo was snapped on a Sunday of my childhood when I, once again, attempted to fight the good fight. In church I had had enough with the gloves already, so I waited for just the right moment during Mass to ball 'em up and chuck 'em under the pew a coupla rows up from where the Holy Gillens were worshipping. But Mother Gillen was too smart for me. She spied the discarded ball 'o gloves as she marched...saintly with her GLOVED hands folded...up the main aisle to communion. I heard about that for weeks.

I shared this photo with friend Quinn McDonald, fellow teacher, coach and extraordinary artist. She wrote, "Not only is the hat perfect, placed squarely on your head, but those GLOVES! I hadda wear them too, and I never noticed they made our hands look HUGE! Minnie Mouse hands! I hated those because they got dirty so easily. My mom insisted I wear them when we went out--riding the bus to town, or on the playground. Oy, oy, oy. They never stayed white when I was on the swings. And as we got older, we wore stretch mesh ones--like fishnet stockings for your hands. Did you have those too?"

Oh yeah.

She also wrote, "...this photo is fabulously defiant. Perhaps an early vision on ennui and distrust of the imperfect world that surrounds the future goddess/priest."

You betcha.

And it still makes this Celt laugh. As James Thurber wrote in The New Yorker: "The proof of humor is the ability to put one's self on awkward public record."

Comments

[Pen]

Mare -- I've only seen that expression on you a couple of times:

1) when you didn't want to do something
2) when someone says something incredibly moronic!

Priceless.

[Kevin aka Colman]

Betcha Mare had a brick in that purse.