She stood with strange posture, trying to retract her arms and will her fingers to shorten. Try as she might, the skirt was still short of fingertip length.
“Your mother know you left the house in that, right?” I ask.
“She thinks this is a cute skirt.”
Hmmmm. I give her two choices. She could either get the original outfit she wore from the house, and which was now probably secreted in her locker, or I could call her mother and ask for a more appropriate item of clothing to be brought to school for her to wear. Amazingly, she had a more appropriate item of clothing at the ready and the call wasunnecessary.
Sweet dress codes. It’s a constant battle, and one can either be frustrated or enjoy the fight. Boys’ pants will sag, tops will expose too much, and skirts or shorts ride too high. It’s part of the school experience.
One girl stood looking at me with a blank expression. She was dressed in a black t-shirt and baggy jeans with cargo pockets. She had black make-up. I stared at her for some time, trying to understand why a teacher had sent her to me. I couldn’t see anything inappropriate. Finally, she turned around and showed me the long raccoon tail sewed to the back of her pants.
“A tail?”
“I’m a furry,” she explained. “I’m a raccoon. I also have ears and a nose if you want to see them, but I don’t wear them to school.”
Thank God.
“So your teacher sent you out of class for having a tail?” I asked.
She nodded, and stood her ground, hands on her hips in defiant posture. While I could understand the teacher being a bit upset over the lack of conventionality, I didn’t think a tail would incite rebellion in the class, at least not after the three or four minutes of novelty wore off.
I asked her more about being a furry, and she spend the next several minutes educating me about a subculture , rising from the world of Japanese anime’ , which I would probably never purposely encounter.
Sometimes a Dress Code is a line in the sand, and sometimes its an opportunity for discussion and understanding the need of students to express themselves. It seemed to me a tail wasn’t such a big deal.
Now, as for the kid with the upside down American flag drawn on his forehead and the “#!!%2 You!” T-shirt…
