School uniforms.
I love them, and I kind of hate them.
They do save so much money because, after all, no teenager gets excited about clothes shopping when itβs khakis and collared shirts in extremely limited color palettes ... that you can pick up at Office Max.
Still, uniforms, or more specifically the dress codes regarding them, can be tricky suckers.
No. 2βs school β which allows white, baby-blue and dark-green collared shirts β actually made one of its former colors verboten. From the schoolβs newsletter: βDuring the last school year we saw an increase in the wide range of what people believe is teal for their colored shirts. Many of these are not teal at all, but electric blue, jade green, or turquoise.β
Of course teal shouldnβt be acceptable β even spell check isnβt recognizing it as I type.
But, seriously, whatβs wrong with people? Not knowing the difference between teal and electric blue? Sheesh. Have these parents never shopped J. Crew? Everyone knows teal is green-blue, just like persimmon is orange and shale is gray but slate is gray with a slight azure tinge. If itβs still confusing, let me refer you to Nigerian Wedding Blog, which has a most helpful post that differentiates teal, turquoise and aqua.
I kid, of course β not about the blog post, thatβs for realsies β but about the color issues. I have mistakenly purchased black pants instead of the required navy because, no matter what Nora Ephron said about a womanβs neck, the cones in the olβ retina are the first to go.
Anyway, this uniform stuff is all very foreign to me because when I was in public school, no one cared.
Spaghetti-strap tops? Mini skirts? Sure! Girls wearing completely open-backed tops? No problem. Our get-ups also included leg warmers, lace gloves and a popular, highly permed, gravity-defying hairdo courtesy of Aqua Net that, while it made you a wickedly dangerous chemistry lab partner, didnβt automatically get you kicked out of school for violating the dress codeβs ban on βextremeβ hairstyles, in effect at many schools these days.
If youβve ever seen a John Hughes movie, then you know what scary sartorial times the β80s were. We could have used some limits.
This was my era. So of course I didnβt think anything of it when No. 2 set off to school with a freshly-inked henna tattoo on her right hand, courtesy of her supremely artistic older sister. After the fact, when the seemingly innocent temporary tat spiraled into Hennagate, Big Daddy claimed that he had misgivings. But, pppbblt, what does he know? Family lore has it that he not only regularly wore a fedora in high school, but he rocked a puffy vest a la Marty McFly in βBack to the Futureβ.
Not listening to his advice on accessorizing.
Guess we should have.
School officials told No. 2 to cover up that tat, with a glove, until it faded. A rule follower in this particular instance, she retrieved a hot-pink mitten slathered in black and white hearts. Yup, definitely less distracting. I ranted for a bit, getting so angry my face turned a lovely shade of crimson β or could it have been closer to Ferrari Red?
No. 1, ever the smart one, slyly pointed out that the schoolβs on the hook for discrimination if the tattoo is religious. I briefly contemplated sending in a note that said, βWeβre Hindu. Back off.β Instead, I reread the dress code and quizzed No. 2 about who said what.
The actual dress code offered nothing specific about temporary body art and turns out no teachers complained. The only people who told her to cover up only did so after No. 2 thrust her hand in their faces and pointed out her, ahem, inkdiscretion. So in the end, I told No. 2 to pack a glove, just in case, but that likely no one would even bring it up again.
You know what? No one did. So while it would make a much better story to tell you that I marched down to the school and stood up for my kidβs rights (call me Norma Cray... Cray) and had a showdown, things quietly faded. Just like the henna tattoo. And, thatβs the appropriate ending. There are so many bigger, more important issues to deal with at our schools than a kid who shows up with temporary dye on her hand two shades darker than her skin in an innocuous abstract design.
So, that was the end of that tat. It is not, however, the end of me trying to track down actual photographic evidence of my significant other in a fedora and/or a puffy vest.
