Remember the man working in a corporate office from Tales of Brace-wearing Part 1 and Part 2? We rejoin him about a week later.
Mid-morning the man was working in the office when two female colleagues knock on his door. They are excited and ask to show off their outfits.
“Sure,” says the man, “I have some time.”
“We love your braces so we did some shopping and put together these styles,” says the first lady. “As you can see, I’m wearing high-waisted, grey pants with burgundy braces and this white blouse.”
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| A similar style by Lena Horschek's collection |
“Fantastic,” says the man. “That’s a classy outfit.”
“And I’m wearing a high-waisted pencil navy skirt with brown braces and this red blouse,” says the second lady.
“Equally fantastic,” says the man. “The browns go well with the pastels.”
“Thank you,” reply the ladies.
“And I’m wearing high-rise grey pants with green braces with this white dress shirt,” says the man.”
“So dapper,” says the first lady.
“Each of us have different colors and our different personalities displayed here, but we are all wearing braces,” says the man.
“That’s right,” says the second lady.
“I can’t get over how comfortable the braces are,” says the first lady. “Whether I’m sitting or standing, they comfortably rest there.”
The man smiled and said, “you’ve been converted to brace-wearing! You’ll wear braces for the rest of your life!”
“Yes!” says both ladies.
“Do you mind if we take a picture?” asks the second lady.
“Not at all, that would be great,” says the man.
And that’s how it came that a photo of the three co-workers wearing braces was taken.
A little Deja Vue happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been taking public transportation to work most everyday for the past 10 years. If you’re a regular bus rider, after a while you start to recognize the other frequent riders. In my case there is a woman that gets on the bus with her 4 boys, she rides for about 20 minutes then the boys get off the bus, the older boy shepherds the younger ones to the school entrance you can see from the bus and mom continues to work. The boy’s range in age from about 12 to maybe 7. I’ve waved a few times, but never really spoken beyond a good morning, the boys are cute as hell and usual are about as well behaved as you can expect from boys that age. Last week, I noticed that the youngest, I’ll call him Junior, was not having a good day and generally whining, squirming, and generally making colossal fuss. After a lot of commotion, she finally got all the boys settled in the seats across the aisle from me, I noticed quickly that Junior was sporting a pair of blue suspenders holding up a pair of jeans that were at least two sizes too big for him. Seriously I could have slid his backpack in his pants and still had room enough for him in them. I was pretty sure he’d gotten his older brothers hand me downs. It was also clear that he didn’t like the suspenders and was trying to take them off, and his mother was just as desperately trying to keep them on him. Anyway, after about 5 minutes of watching the drama, I decided to have some fun. I crumpled up some note paper tightly into balls about the size of ping pong balls and used my suspenders to fire the one of my paper balls at Junior, like I’d done when I was a kid. All that training in middle school paid off because I put the first shot right on Junior’s ear. He looked around and couldn’t figure out where it had come from. He went back to whining so when he wasn’t looking I did it again. At this point his mom figured out what was going on and mouthed a quick “gracias”. I showed him how I had done it. After a moment he scampered around the bus floor to pick up the spent ammunition, then sat down and quickly worked out how do it himself with his own suspenders. I got a huge grin when he got one to fly, we fired some shots back and forth across the aisle at each other so he could practice. Then he promptly nailed one of his older brothers, who was way too cool to be involved with something this juvenile, in the forehead . That led to a wrestling match and peels of laughter. By the time they had gotten to the school bus stop, Junior was back to his normal cheerful self, I got a big smile and a wave out of him when he got off the bus with his brothers. I felt like Id done my good deed for the day. As the week went on, he had those suspenders on every day I saw him. The following week I noticed a new pair had been added. This morning, once the boys had gotten off for school his mom sat down next to me, handed me a dozen homemade tamale's and thanked me. As Id suspected he’d outgrown most of his clothes, she couldn’t afford new ones for him, so she’d backfilled with some of his older brothers pants that he hadn’t really grown into. The poor kid was already miserable because his bio-dad had gotten drunk the night before rather than spending the evening with him. Now he had to wear pants that were too big for him with a pair of suspenders, it was just too much and the poor kid and he'd throwing tantrums, acting or sulking all morning. Anyway in 10 minutes, Id made the kid happy. After hating the suspenders so much he'd turned around to the point where she'd had to go to a thrift store and find him a couple of more pairs. because he insisted on wearing them even if he didn't need to. I think I converted the poor kid to suspenders and the tamale's were excellent. Good days work dont you think?
ReplyDelete@GuyNsuspenders: Yes, that's a great story! Thanks for sharing. Suspenders do come in handy as a slingshot in addition to keeping boys pants up. Another boy discovers the benefits of suspenders and will hopefully will wear them for the rest of his life!
DeleteI dont know about the rest of his life, he's been wearing them often since that first time I've noticed. I'm thinking that his wearing seems to have more to do with whether the pants or shorts can stay up without them or not. Im just happy I may have helped him get over the 1st day hump of necessity suspender wearing. I remember that being a little anxious/scary for the first couple of days when I did it years ago.
DeleteOkay I think I created a lifer. Junior showed up on the bus this morning with a pair of black suspenders with about a dozen orange jack-o-lanterns stickers on them for Halloween.
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