On Staying Dressed

I taped a TV show yesterday and managed to stay dressed the whole time, which was a great relief to me. I went through a period where there was nothing I liked better than getting the cameramen on the set to laugh right out loud. In a spot I did once on a noontime magazine show, I stood up at the climax of my story and whipped off my suit-jacket to reveal the fact that I had my blouse on inside-out, something that was immediately evident in that great age of shoulder pads. It was a story my sister Nan had told me, from the hard first year of her untimely widowhood.It seems that at long last she had been able to drag herself to a social event  and found herself actually chatting with a very nice man - only her teenage daughter kept darting by to say she needed to talk to her."Later!" Nan hissed to her. "In a minute!" she said a second time and yet the girl kept swooping in to say "Mom I need to talk to you!"Finally Nan made her apologies to the nice man and stepped aside with her daughter.  “This better be good!” she said.“It's good all right. You have your dress on inside-out.”  She looked down and sure enough: here were the little foam epaulets of the shoulder pads, the exposed seams, the pockets like little dead fish dangling down from the waistband.... That's all I was doing that time: showing everyone in TV-land how funny she must have looked. And sure enough the cameramen chortled audibly.So I guess it was a victory all right. Back then I would do just about anything to get a laugh. Probably the only reason I’m not like that now is that half the time I really do have my clothes on inside-out. Or backwards. Or else my earrings don’t match.So I was dignified yesterday instead of fearless. Maybe fearlessness is behind me for good now (but gosh I sure hope not!)