Standing in line at Logan Entertainment Centre waiting for my vaccination, I couldn’t help but notice the young lady wearing pyjamas.
The left hemisphere of my brain, the creative side, was giving her the benefit of the doubt. I looked around quickly, like other people might know what was passing through my captious mind. Seriously, who was I to be creating doubt without knowing the devil’s detail?
Fashion changes with the wind. Maybe they weren’t pyjamas at all.
Just some couture with a very expensive label with a name I’d probably recall from a recent news report parading the new design as the best thing since boob tubes and boardshorts, to which I’d wonder who on earth would wear that horrible get-up in a group of more than three people.
Think about it. That’s a really clever line.
Then, lo and behold, the party’s arrived right here in front of us, in our queue of diversity. And here’s ungainly me, still donning socks with my shorts and sneakers, asking why someone might be wearing their lounging robe in full public view.
If that was the case, the modern twist was foreign to the ignorant couple in front of me, well dressed and seemingly well versed in trend, yet blissfully disdainful of the young lady’s style choices.
If Mr and Mrs tracksuit top were to believed, she’d rolled out of bed and into the Covid vaccination train, uncaring of any overly-judgemental folk around her.
And why not when you’ve got a compulsory 1.5m buffer to work with? Mary Quant would have been proud. She didn’t need social distancing to part the crowds when flaunting the first mini.
Which thrust my more logical side to start thinking.
The young lady might have spent time prior looking at Facebook groups, learning of government conspiracies and what “messenger RNA” does to baby mice. “If I’m going to take a hit for the team and land in a hospital bed, might as well be dressed for the occasion.”
Maybe she was the same young lady I saw dressed in a different set of pyjamas at the shopping centre. Just a creature of comfort, in which case I’m in full admiration.
Actually, might I say I’m in full admiration regardless of what prompted the call to step out in her cheer gear, avante-garde, whatever. More courage than the rest of us.
I must add that the last time I wore a set of real pyjamas was in 1973 when I was asked to spend a night on the couch at the home of my parents-in-law. Wanda didn’t know I had any nightwear, but I’d cleverly forecast the screenplay and zipped into a store to buy a set of flannelettes the day before.
I think I saw them on a later visit lining the dog basket. Never a word was spoken.
Geoffrey, my friend from the old folks’ home, occasionally goes out in his pyjamas. But that’s normally due to a lapse in judgement on a number of fronts. He’s usually forgotten where he’s going, what he’s wearing, and when he gets to wherever he’s shuffled to, has no idea where he is anyway.
That requires a call to the police whose first question is inevitably: “What are you doing in your pyjamas?”
The correct answer would be “who cares?” and “who are you to judge anyway?”
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