Guest Post - Another Little Girl, Even Bigger Glasses

Today's installment of I'm On Vacation and You're Not features another of my favorite people I found floating around the ol' dubyadubyadubya, Heatherty Featherty. She is a super smart super talented super busy mommy of two little boys. She has a full time job that makes her travel all over the place, a husband who surprises her with old car parts and a puppy who is to being potty trained. and for fun? She sews. Like really well. Not like how I hem up a sheet and call it a "duvet cover" and act like I'm all talented. She actually uses patterns and fancy fabric that isn't sheets and makes wearable, cute clothing. Weird, huh?  Her stories are funny and real and I'm pretty sure if we lived in the same neighborhood we'd have a bunch of fun.

I asked Heather to give me her memories of being a Little Girl with Big Glasses...because I just had a feeling...

::

 

Penne is the greatest. There, I got that out of the way. I think that's a prerequisite to writing a guest post, right? Thank God this time the praise wasn't hard to do or totally lame like "Oh, I'm sure if I knew Penne in person she would...ummm...smell super great and have the right toenail polish on."

 

Back to how she's awesome? Yeah, she's also on vacation. So she asked if I would be so kind as to fill the silence here on Big Glasses with a little story about how super cool I was when I was a little girl with big glasses. Because weren't we all, at one point in time? Don't pretend you were born with your flashy Lasic surgery. I hope she doesn't go gambling on one of those Indian reservations and blow her life savings. My therapist charges $200 an hour and after effectively suppressing these memories, thanks to Penne they've all come flooding back. It could literally take me months of changing diapers and folding laundry to forget about them again.

 

Oh, well. Here we go.

Yes, I had the big glasses. The oddly shaped, pearlescent specs with the bendy arms that had little bits of golden flecks in the resin. God, they rocked when I picked them out. It's only in hindsight that I look at the pictures and think "huh?"

 

And I certainly had the accompanying accoutrement of the time - the permanent wave, the Flock of Seagulls left-to-right bi-level wedge haircut, the jeans rolled super tight at the ankles and preferably Guess by Georges Marciano with the appropriate triangle-shaped tag on the bum, the slouchy sweater with a turtleneck underneath. But that was in eighth grade. The peak of being cool, because the next year you're knocked back to being a total loser freshman again.

 

As I was doing my little walky walky down memory lane, I started back in Ye Olden Days of Olde, back when Heather was a young'n. When my mom still made a lot of my clothes. And then, dammit, I was suddenly flooded with memories of sixth grade. Of a certain boy in my class who shall remain nameless but I can tell you his initials were FRANK, who wrote me the kindest note one day, sort of a public service announcement where he gently informed me that all the boys in class hated me and also they hated my plaid pants, the ones my mom had made for me.

 

Stupid Frank! He ruined it for me, wearing those killer red plaid pants my mom had made out of Pendleton wool. I so loved those pants. She'd lined them with swishy red lining that made swishy lining noises when I walked and made me feel like an important secretary or librarian. Oh, I suppose in fairness he was possibly right about them, but why do kids have to be so mean?

 

So I quickly pushed past sixth grade memories and landed in seventh. Ahhh, sweet seventh grade. I weighed somewhere around a hundred pounds, maybe 110, and hit five foot nine inches tall that year. Good times. 

 

You know what girls love? They love to be way taller than all the rest of the kids. And freakishly thin, that's a great combination. I have an abundance of faded stretch marks on my upper thighs that I'd love to say came from the two stints I spent as a gestating mom to two gigantic male babies, but alas - it wouldn't be true. The only stretch marks I have on this here goddess-like figure of mine came when I was in seventh grade and I grew so fast in one year it literally split my skin. 

 

I can hear the doubt in your minds. Well, behold the photographic evidence, complete with big glasses.