If you show your belly...

There were several socially accepted things when the girls were teenagers that I never could quite tolerate. I have been known to count with my fingers the number of times that someone said "like" when it wasn't a legitimate part of a simile.

Early in the aughts, most girl pants were cut to sit low at the hips and most shirts were none too long. This led to a midriff problem. Caroline continued to assert that she had an unusually long torso, but I would have none of it. I developed a response as per the title of this post, and if either of my girls showed their belly, I would show mine. This was reasonably effective, especially after a Friday night in Madison, GA. We were on our way to Orangeburg and stopped at the Zaxby's off of I-20. It being Friday night, all the cheerleaders were there, along with the football fans headed to that week's game. Anyway, I saw some belly on Eleanor, so hiked my shirt up nice and high and let the hairy man-belly do its thing. Even Mary Anne bordered on being embarrassed. My pastor, Vic, found the story good enough to include in his Easter sermon that year.

The second best part was that most of my Sunday School class knew the story was about my girls, even though we weren't mentioned by name. The best part was that Eleanor, who had obviously been with us at Zaxby's, was out of the country on Spring Break that Easter, so she missed the sermon. As was our custom, we watched it all together on the TV when she was back. We hadn't told her what was coming, but MA and Caroline and I were all watching her and then boyfriend as that part of the story came along. She curled up in a bashful ball on the couch when it became clear where the story was going and the rest of us laughed until, as Bill Cosby says, we fell out the chair.

The empty nest leaves me with fewer opportunities to have much impact on wardrobe. Those were the days.