Lookin' Good Feelin' Nifty

A question I have to ask myself today is: does a grown woman look totally insane in puffed sleeves? It’s hard to believe because I mean LOOK HOW CUTE IN KINDERGARTEN but it may be so, alas. I bought a little puffed sleeved number for summer wear last month and donned it just now and, well, I think I look like Jimmy Carter’s wife in it. I look like Rosalyn Carter and how grouchy everybody did get about the way she was just doing her own hair every single day in the White House with no help from the hair-maintenance pros! Remember that? Or, wait, maybe Rosalynn had too much on the ball for puffed sleeves, maybe it's Jimmy Carter’s MOTHER I look like yeah maybe it’s old Miz Lillian, but wait that’s not it either. Maybe... I know! I look like Shirley Temple, when she got to be just a teensy bit Too Old For Cute and the nation turned its back on her and she was forced to become a Republican and seek exile in foreign embassies.What if I’m like the no-longer-cute-as-a-button Shirley Temple Black? Me, the once-cute-as-a-button Terry Sheehy?

You worry about these things a little but if you’re smart you don’t worry much. I was riding down in the elevator from Floor Twelve at last week’s fancy resort hotel. I was headed for the pool so I was barefoot. I had just dropped my bottle of spring water and was trying to pick up with my toes when the elevator stopped on a dime and the doors sucked open on Four and here was this woman. “Is this going DOWN?” she asked, as if elevators sometimes go sideways.

“Well the two of US are sure going down!" I smiled, pointing to my water bottle. “Hey you look terrific!” I said to her as she got in and she did too: shiny red nails on both feet and hands, a shiny matching lipstick of a quality that could make anyone’s mouth look like Renee Zellwegger’s mouth, a little flaring jacket over trim linen slacks… “No. I look awful,” she sighed. “Are you out of your mind?” I countered. "You look like six times better than the rest of these jokers.” But “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m dressed all wrong for this place.” And then boom there we were in the lobby and now even five days later I’m still trying to figure out what she meant.

We were in the sultry south after all and I did see lots of flouncy dresses going by on ladies wearing big floppy hats but weren’t they all going on some kind of garden tour? Those were just costumes; that’s what I figured but then what did I know? I was in a pair of shorts one of our kids left behind 15 years ago and a tank-top that’s been in my wardrobe so long the cloth is starting to wear through at the sticky-outy parts and hey I thought I looked jim-dandy.

It must just be what you’re comfortable in. Maybe this lady felt like a much-pruned piece of topiary in a landscape of swooning magnolias. Maybe she just felt wrong, like I seem to feel in this silly puffed-sleeve blouse.

I’d offer you a photo of it but I’d have to use the old hold-the-camera-and-take-a picture-of yourself-in-the-mirror trick since I wouldn’t feel like dragging out the tripod and all. It would be a good picture though and maybe tonight if I get a second wind after I do the ironing tonight

I’ll try it. In the meantime in the spirit of saluting the beauty of youth let me close here by trying to post a few images: Shirley Temple, young,Rosalyn Smith Carter, young, and that star of stars the Baby Jesus.