The Girl in the Aqua Net Dress

Once I hit my forties and the march of time became inevitable, I swore I would not turn into one of those frumpy old women as I eased into my fifties, sixties and beyond. Nice thought...but this age stuff really sneaks up on you, doesn't it?! Sorry to say, I am not really aging as gracefully as I'd hoped.

I look at those admirable, 'mature' (baby boomer) women on YouTube with their beauty/lifestyle channels and I think, 'Oh! I could do that!'  Part of me really wants to...but no. No, I really couldn't. First of all, I doubt I could commit to it for any length of time. Lately I'm often too fatigued to put that much energy into such a long term project. 

Most of all, I've been plagued by stage fright my entire life. A darn shame, too, since from an early age I wanted desperately to be a) a ballerina  b) a famous singer  c) an actress or d) all of the above. I deeply longed to be in the limelight. And practiced too! Around age four, Santa brought me a pink tutu. I whirled and twirled in it on the hardwood floor in front of our big old Philco television. When turned off, it made a great, almost full length mirror for a tiny dancer.

A few years later, I often sneaked into my teenage sister's closet and purloined one of her Job's Daughters formals. She had several of these tulle and satin creations that they wore to their meetings. I especially remember a pastel aqua creation, with rhinestones scattered throughout the net fabric. It was a strapless number, fortified with stiff boning to hold the bodice up. I'd stuff my Buster Brown socks into the bosom, grab a hairbrush to use as a microphone, assume my position 'on stage' and sing, a la Ethel Merman:

Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame,
Wake up the echoes cheering her name,
Send a volley cheer on high,
Shake down the thunder from the sky.
What though the odds be great or small
Old Notre Dame will win over all,
While her loyal sons are marching 
Onward to Victory!

When memory calls up that young girl dressed up in her sister's flouncy, early 60's era, prom-my dress, I can still feel myself raising my fist to the sky as I belt out that 'Victory!' at the end. Ruefully, I laugh and shake my head.

I managed okay throughout the elementary era Christmas/Easter pageants, because there were a lot of us on stage simultaneously, so misery had company. Also, our little speeches memorized by rote were simple to rattle off and be done with.

But as we grew older and our classmates grew crueler and more scathing in their taunting and mocking, my stage fright grew exponentially. Regardless of that and my relentlessly growing stage-fright, when freshman cheerleader tryouts came along at the end of eighth grade, I decided to give it a go. I wanted badly to be a cheerleader. At the time, it was my most fervent dream.

Despite somehow having become an object of ridicule during my junior high years (I was chubby, wore funny clothes and wasn't always the brightest scholar in the class--in short, I was a dweeb) I flung caution to the wind and signed up to try out.  I'd never win if I didn't try. A girl in my class, Debbie, worked with me for a couple of weeks teaching me a few routines. I had them down pat. Then the day came for the auditions and out on the floor I went and faced my classmates sitting in the bleachers. 

The fear gripped me intensely. I felt like melting jello inside. My legs felt like they were filled with concrete. Then the hoots and catcalls drove all the cheers right out of my head and my mind became a total blank. I fled the gym floor in the utmost shame and mortification. Debbie's expression was seared onto my retinas. Her disgust at having wasted so much of her time was written all over her face in big bold letters.

Throughout the rest of my life that deeply rooted stage fright has plagued me, so I don't see how I could ever put myself in front of a camera and talk to cyberspace. Prior to retiring, my job often required me to get up and make presentations and talk to large groups. That ingrained terror manifests itself in a mouth as dry as the Sahara, a twitching upper lip and knocking knees. Public speaking was always my greatest bane, to say the least. But I did it anyway and hopefully got much better over the two decades I worked at that job.

But I'm just an ordinary woman with nothing especially stellar to say that someone else isn't already saying. And now old age has crept up and bitten me right in the caboose when I wasn't looking...  

The woman who once dressed and groomed herself meticulously every day has disappeared. The giant walk-in closet jammed full of pretty clothes for every occasion is gone forever.  When my at-the-time new husband asked about the plethora of shoes, with a straight face I told him 'a woman simply can't have too many pairs of black shoes.' Today, my clothing fits into one small closet and a few drawers. I only own maybe six pairs of shoes. I just don't need more. Much of what I have never gets worn anyway.

Somehow I have a lot of bad hair days. I no longer wear makeup on the daily. Why? I'm not going anywhere and my skin prefers to be bare. Plus my eyes have grown sensitive to shadow, liner and mascara. I'm certainly no fashion icon; I dress to be comfortable. I've not yet discovered the magical elixir of youth--I look my age. I look exactly like Dorien's Gwannie... 

But somewhere deep inside, that little ballerina longing to see herself in lights, belting out the Notre Dame Victory song, lives on!

Till next time,

"In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." ~ Andy Warhol