Skip to main content

Over and Under


Back in the Paris Métro, I don't remember which station. I was with a couple of friends, G. and (I think) N., one male and one female, both of them participants in my study-abroad program. We were on a cultural excursion that day, waiting to the side of the ticket booth for the entire group to assemble before continuing on toward the platform. I remember it was a very cold day. All the more reason for us to take notice of the two men (Scots, we assumed) in their kilts on the other side of the entry/exit barriers. None of us, not even the most feminine girls, could imagine wearing a skirt on a day that cold—at least not without tights, which the Scots certainly did not have on. They were trying to exit, but were having some difficulty. We watched them attempt repeatedly to get past the barrier without success. Was it N. who asked whether the rumors were true? It was said that men in kilts wore nothing underneath. In a flash, it was decided: the men shrugged and vaulted over the barriers. Over they went, and up flew the kilts; underneath, we witnessed, not a stitch. Flying kilts, flapping genitals—not exactly how you might imagine being flashed in the Paris Métro, but certainly memorable. The sudden skin show resulted ever after in a private greeting between the three of us: never again could G., N., or I see each other without waving our hands in a flourish from the waist, mimicking the pleated plaid material traveling on its revealing updraft.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tap Root Manuscript

Here is an early music memory: I am very young. If not still a toddler, then not much older. I am running around the living room, squealing with unrestrained delight, while my dad chases me to the tune of "I Am the Lion" by Neil Diamond (Ba-pa-la ding-ga!). He's reached deep down and pulled out his big baritone voice—the one he also used for "Old Man River" on occasion; the one that always awed me. It's the early 1970s, and although hopelessly pop and showy, there is no shame in liking Neil Diamond. Not at this time. Later, I'd go through nearly two decades of keeping this (admittedly) often schmaltzy artist at more than arm's length. When I bothered to remember Neil Diamond, which generally I didn't, I thought of him more like a skeleton in my musical closet; a dirty little secret that, if exposed, would set me up for some heavy razzing from friends. I don't remember when it was that I recovered my dad's Tap Root Manuscript album. It wa...
7 comments
Read more

Black Kids Read, Too

The worst kind of prejudice is the kind that slips under the radar. It's too subtle to cause a stir (and if you point it out, you'll usually get a sideways look: you're the one making too much of nothing), but its corrosive message nevertheless seeps in—subliminally, insidiously—beating down the spirit of the group it belittles or excludes. I am blessed to have been raised by two parents who were sensitive to prejudicial undercurrents; they fought against them in their own distinct ways through the tumultuous 1960s, and into the 70s and 80s as I was growing up. And it seems, thinking about it now, that they never missed a good learning moment with me: we often discussed issues of bias, prejudice, stereotype, and their harmful effects. This week, images in some of my kindergartener's reading books gave me pause. And in wrestling with how to handle these, I remembered something I hadn't thought of in many years: the library at the Brentwood Science Magnet School in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Touch Typing

Between seventh and eighth grades (or between eighth and ninth?) the deal was this: if I wanted to take an art class in summer school, I had to take typing. So said Mom. Although I didn't mind being in an art studio soldering bits of stained glass together, the thought of staying inside, seated in front of a typewriter when I could see the sun in its beautiful blue sky out the window, was torture. Still, I sat there. Such is the suffering one will endure for art! I typed the home keys in order, hundreds of times: a-s-d-f-g-h-j-k-l-;. I stretched my fingers up for T and Y and down for B. I did pages of the prototype sentence, "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs." Yes, it has every letter of the alphabet in it at least once. I learned to automatically put two spaces after each period. (I have had a hard time undoing this habit, but a copy editor's job these days is often to make sure there is only one space following a complete sentence!) It's fair to say...
3 comments
Read more