There’s something to be said about time travel.
It’s fun, actually, and not hard to do if you dress the part.
The other night I slipped back to the Fifties as easily as if I were one of those long play shiny black records spinning round and round on the scratchy needle of an old fashioned record player.
I didn’t mean to time travel, but only to dress up, so I would fit in at the dance with all the other dressed up people.
I came home from work all tired and old and definitely not feeling like a teenager.
But my husband and I had tickets for this dance where you were supposed to dress up in the decade of your choice.
My girlfriends, who are natural born planners, had already discussed the issue at length and decided to go to the dance as elegant and sophisticated flapper ladies, complete with feather boas that left little feathers all over the place kind of like misplaced angels or fallen angels, whatever the case may be. They were going to wear ridiculously high heels and fire engine red lipstick and look really smashing.
And they did!
I didn’t want to be a flapper girl.
But I had to be something, so I dug into my closet, coming up with a skirt that twirled delightfully around my knees, bobby socks and running shoes with pink shoelaces. I put my hair up in a high ponytail, tied it with a white ribbon I ruthlessly pulled off my kitchen curtains and fastened a pair of pearls around my neck.
I brazenly lined my eyes with coal black liquid eyeliner, brushed on too many coats of mascara and recklessly applied dated bright blue eyeshadow that had somehow escaped the trash.
I surveyed the finished product in the mirror and, as I looked at the made up woman who bore only a slight resemblance to the girl who used to be me, something happened inside of me.
I got younger.
For one thing, I felt slimmer. I felt like I had a 20-inch waist again. I tried to cinch the buckle of my wide belt in a little tighter on account of feeling that way but for some reason it didn’t happen.
Oh, well, who needs reality anyway?
I decided to focus on my hair and flip my ponytail like I used to do when I was in high school. I was far too shy to converse with the opposite sex, but could however, flip my ponytail with the best of them. I hoped this action would make me cool enough so I didn’t really have to talk, only flip and keep walking.
It worked sometimes.
Unfortunately, my ponytail, which I created out of this hairpiece I found stuck under my bathroom sink, was in danger of flipping right off my head if I tried to flip it too vigorously. I settled for a gentle flip and stuck a few more bobby pins in my head, hoping it would stay intact.
We arrived at the dance, me with my make believe ponytail and my scratchy black crinoline showing only just slightly beneath my black poodle skirt and my husband dressed in a white T-shirt and blue jeans.
We were ready to rock and roll the night away.
The music filled the crowded arena with just the right amount of nostalgia and people could jive and bebop their way down memory lane to the Fifties or dance the Charleston way back to the flapper era.
I loved the music and I loved the way my skirt swished when I walked and when I danced. And, I loved the delicious feeling, even though it was gone in less than a heartbeat, of being young again, too young to worry about very much at all.
Sometimes I can’t believe I ever was that young and yet the feeling I caught that night seemed familiar somehow.
So, it must be true. I was young, once! And my ponytail was real!
— On The Other Side