Cardiogirl: 19% body fat 100% fun

For Christmas, I ordered two robes for our older girls with their names embroidered on the front. Katie has been asking, on and off, for a robe for the last year or so. It’s not like I am specifically telling her she cannot have a robe, it just keeps slipping my mind. So I know she’ll love that gift. And Allison loves anything Katie loves, so I’m set on that front.

My question is, does anyone actually wear a robe out there in cyberspace. Well, not in cyberspace, but you know what I mean. I do not have a robe, I do not wear a robe. I do not miss having a robe; I am not a robe-wearin’ chick.

Alright, I did do a stint in college of wearing a robe. Those particular memories have kind of been blocked out. Don’t get me wrong, college was a good time; I have fond memories. But for three out of four years I lived in the dorm with community bathrooms. Ugh, I am grimacing and shuddering at the memory of it. I hated community bathrooms.

There were about 12 showers, two rows of six, in that bathroom for approximately 60 girls. So I had a robe, a plastic basket that held my shampoo, soap and wash cloth and I had shower shoes. YUCK! I hated my shower shoes.

This is such a nasty memory. I hate flip flops. I cannot stand having anything between my toes and flip flops, of course, have that thong-like item between the big toe and the second toe. I couldn’t deal with that and for some reason I could not find plastic sandals that were of the slip on variety with one band across.

So I wore those leather boat shoes; I believe they are called Sperry Topsiders. Remember those? Back in the late 1980s those were must-have shoes. I’m sure I had two pairs, the pair I wore to class and the old pair I wore in the shower. I simply called them shower shoes and I stored them inside the closet in the plastic basket that housed my shampoo.

As you can imagine, the leather shoes did not respond well to repeated assaults of water and soap. Even though they’re supposed to handle water well, what with being boating shoes and all, they didn’t do very well. Because they were wet in the morning and I jammed them into that basket, they would dry overnight into a curled up version of witch’s shoes.

Except they were curled in half, it’s not like the toes curled into a spiral. Because everyone knows that witch’s shoes have the toe that curls up into a full spiral. And depending how whimsical said witch is, she might have bells on the toes. I didn’t have bells on my shower shoes.

I remember the disgusting struggle I endured every morning when I fought the shoe to get my foot inside of them.

Yeah, I was working with the lesser of two evils. I actively feared the tile in the shower, but as I think of it now, my nasty shoes probably had more disgusting organisms living inside of them, in the dark in my closet (pauses as she screams violently inside her head at the revelation) than the tile floor that was washed daily by the maintenance crew.

(Takes a good moment to spaz out thrashing limbs and body parts in all directions.) Surprisingly I never got athlete’s foot. And I think I found some kind of plastic slip on shoe for my sophomore year. I told you, I have blocked this entire memory out, for obvious reasons.

So that was my three-year-stint with a robe.

Clearly, since I was forced to wear that robe under duress, I have questions about someone who would choose to wear a robe. Where do you store a robe? Do you lie it across the end of the bed and sleep with it at your feet over the covers? Do you have some hook in your closet? Is there a hook in the bathroom and that’s where you put it?

Do you feel empowered when you wear it? Does it have buttons or just a fabric belt? Do you tie the belt in a knot, or do you tie it like a tourniquet so one pull on one side will undo the belt? Why do you wear it and for how long in the morning do you wear it?

Couldn’t you wear a zip up sweatshirt if you’re cold in the morning? That’s what I do. But I’m rarely cold. I find I am actually cold enough to wear a sweat shirt in the morning approximately nine times each winter. And those nine times are spread out over four or five months’ time. I don’t know if menopause is coming or if removing my thyroid messed up my internal thermometer. But I’m not usually cold. I’m usually warm or too hot.

I have no memory of my father wearing a robe. My mom, on the other hand, did wear a robe. I don’t ever remember her having a new robe, the one she wore always looked like it was well worn and she basically wore it first thing in the morning until she got ready for work. She never lingered in the morning. I would assume she felt best getting up and getting ready for the day. She also kept her robe on a hook on the back of the door in the bathroom.

I’m also curious about slippers. I think those go hand-in-hand with a robe, but I’m not sure. My family was not a slipper-wearin’ kind of family and I prefer to wear a comfortable pair of low tops in the morning. So if you have a clue about slippers, please feel free to share that info as well.

I’m just going to speculate here, that after everyone leaves a comment to explain this to me, I am going to feel like I was raised by wolves. That’s just a speculation, I’ll verify or deny that in tomorrow’s post.

Carry on.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 5:49 am and is filed under Stream of Consciousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.