Who Cares What Nansi Thinks?

I don't feel good today. If you know me well, you'll know that when I don't feel good, I wear very flashy clothes. I figure I'll let my clothes do all the work while I curl up in a ball and feel like sha-poopie behind the glamor and glitz.

Today I wore (*gasp*) ORANGE! That was the forbidden color when I was a kid. I was never allowed to wear orange or red; or their pastel versions, peach or pink. Mom declared that red heads should never wear these colors, but most especially they should NEVER wear orange.

I remember when my big sister left home, the first thing she did was get an orange outfit. Although, it may have been the second thing she did. She probably got her ears pierced first because my mother always declared that pierced ears were for "gypsies and whores." Whatever Mom... I remember when my big sister came in wearing the orange dress. It had a scalloped hemline with white trim-it reminded me of a dream cicle. I thought it was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen and I envied her for having the guts to wear it. Mom looked at the dress through thin slits, it seemed to really make her mad.

It's only been in the past couple of years that I've gotten orange clothing. As usual, I bought the orange shoes first. The first time I wore Orange to work at the nursing home, I told my boss, Barb, how my mother felt about orange and said, "She'll probably ground me for life when she sees this outfit!" Well a couple of hours later I noticed that mom kept wheeling past the business office but wouldn't come in. Finally, thinking she was lost, I yelled, "MOM??? Are you looking for me?" She stuck her nose up in the air and declared, "Well that IS you, I didn't think it was, I NEVER thought I'd see you in ORANGE!" Barb spit an entire mouthful of tea on the windows. It was hilarious!

Later I related to Barb just how verboten Orange was in my life. It may SHOCK you to know that I was a cheerleader when I was a young girl. (They call me relentlessly perky!) From eighth to tenth grade my school colors were orange and white. My mother actually made me wear a brown wig on picture days. Thank goodness she didn't make me cheer in the wig! It wasn't until I was telling Barb about the wig (and seeing the look of shock on her face) that it dawned on me that it just wasn't normal to expect a child to wear a wig if their cheerleading outfit was a bad color.

Mom and I had a big laugh about that today when I went to see her. She loves to stop people and say, "Look at Nansi wearing Orange. I never let her wear that color when she was growing up!" Mom says she didn't know what she was thinking. "Orange is a wonderful color for you! I wonder what else I got wrong?!" Got a life time? :o)