Now that I've brought up the memory of the sealskin coat, there's another story that goes along with it.
My last year in college, my mother got a bee in her bonnet to have the sealskin coat cut down to a more modern style for me. After some discussion and some convincing, I took it to Dayton's for the alterations. I made sure to pick out the color of lining that I wanted. Electric green. Very fashionable at the time. So the coat was cut back and I found that I could no longer wear it around campus like a big bear blanket, because it was now stylish and it would have looked way too pretentious. If there was one bugaboo on campus at the time, it was looking pretentious. The PETA folks had not been invented yet.
But.
There was this large bag of all the fur remains that had been cut from the coat in the alteration phase. As an inveterate saver, I had stored them in my closet at Kirk Hall and they were just gathering dust. Then, in the spring of '73, inspiration hit. What if we took those scraps and lined jock straps with their soft fuzziness? We could make and give them to our guy friends! What a great idea! What guy wouldn't want a little extra 'protection' from the cold during those freezing winter months?
I rounded up a group of women friends. Not to name names, but there was Margaret, Chica, Holly, Susan, and a few others. We dubbed ourselves the Women's Underground Sewing Society and guerilla group and opened for business. We must've spent several days sewing the fur into the jockstraps. By hand! We even added sew on decals to the fronts of the jockstraps to personalize them. Then we waited. Til one night when all of us were gathered together for dinner at the dining commons (otherwise known as Saga) and we made an awards ceremony out of it. The guys were so touched that, when we had finished dinner, they put their jockstraps on over their pants and boldly strode out of the dining commons in true runway fashion to the delight and bemusement of all in attendance at dinner that night.
Let them try to make a Mastercard memory out of that.
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4 comments:
There is a terrible pun lurking somewhere in the background about these gifts you made being like other fads that didn't last...like Pet Rocks. But really, when you think about how cold it is at Mac, wouldn't you think this one would have lasted? ;-)
Don't you have pictures of the guys modeling the jocks? I know I can remember seeing pictures of that happy event.
Oh, Chica, I wish I did. Maybe it was another of our trusty band that had the camera. I took pics when we went to Minnehaha park (and plan to tell that story eventually too).
Stumbled upon your blog today and enjoyed the visit so much, I decided to join right up! You have such a wide range of topics that you write about....all interesting and and meaty. (I write long and so do you! I like reading posts that actually tell a story, or have something to say! A lot of people just write short little paragraphs that just don't grab me much.
Love to have you stop by and say hi!
http://mellodeemusings.blogspot.com/
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