Spirit Week

It just so happens to be Spirit Week at Lennon's school.  Which seems like the perfect opportunity to share with you this glimpse of what makes Renee, Renee:

Back in my junior high years I wore a lot of thrift store clothes.  My sister and I seemed to think of it as "taking back The Poor."  Essentially, we were, for once in our lives, OWNING that the thrift store was where we purchased clothes, since we had to anyway.  Because the 90's was all about irony, (or maybe because they were a dollar cheaper) we usually bought clothes that were pretty blatant about once belonging to now-dead people.  Grandpa shirts, dated blouses, faded tees...  For the most part, it ended up working for us, on a We MEANT To Look This Way level.  Mostly, it was just good to not be naked.      

In 9th grade, we had a Spirit Week that included 70's day.  I did a little digging in our closets and came up with some bell bottoms and a blue and white polyester butterfly-collared shirt.  I was proud of my efforts to maintain authenticity.  I even parted my hair in the middle.  

I think you got class points, or a lollipop, or some kind of credit for dressing up, and when the representatives came around to the classrooms to count who dressed up, I rose my hand with confidence.  Lollipop, here I come.  

And that's when one of my least favorite people EVER protested.  "She dresses like that every day!  That shouldn't count!"  And because I wasn't popular or important, and because I was too embarrassed to stand up for myself, I didn't get credit, and I spent the whole day sulking in bell bottoms.  (By the way, Miss Captain of the Fashion Police was wearing a very frustrating display of 1960's costume-in-a-bag apparel.  Just so you know.)  

A couple of years later, thrift stores because a popular place to shop, and the very same girl who protested my clothing often came to school in the same style of clothes she once mocked.  I'll admit, that stung just a little, and it sort of pissed me off that it was harder to find clothes on the racks.  Only so many old men die in a given weekend, you know?  But for the most part I just chalked it up to What It's Like To Be Renee.  *Sometimes, it's shit.*  

I still don't like snotty popular girls, but despite the negative experience, Spirit Week is still appealing to me, because dressing up is fun, and it's a chance to get creative.  I can't wait to help Lennon put together some outfits from the clothes we have on hand.  But I'll admit I have some anxiety about tomorrow.  

Tomorrow is Nerd Day.  And if I dress Lennon up, and some little snotface protests on the grounds of redundancy, well...  I just don't know what.  I guess just wait a few years until Lennon is old enough to blog indignantly  about the injustice of it all, .  Or maybe you'll be reading in the news about how I punched a smug kindergardener in the neck.  Either way, should be a fun story to tell...