My children and I shopped for school clothes on Labor Day every year. Waiting until the last minute meant big savings. The tradition continues with my grandchildren; we shop for back-to-school shoes and outfits right before the first day of classes. As they model the latest footwear and ensembles, I remember September, 1960, the beginning of eighth grade, like it was yesterday.
     My sister and I had started a new school. She was a year behind me, a seventh grader. We had new Bobbie Brooks’ outfits for the first day—skirts and shirts that looked like shirtwaist dresses—mine was black and blue Watch Plaid; hers, black and red. That first week, we were allowed to wear regular clothes, like the lucky public school kids did all year long. After that, it would be frumpy blue jumpers and white blouses.
     Dad got it in his head we shouldn’t give our new classmates the idea we were swells; he insisted we wear the same outfit two days in a row. We begged and cried, but Dad held firm. When he left for work, we waved good-bye, then ran upstairs and changed outfits with each other. We yelled, "So long," to Mom as the screen door slammed behind us.
     When we got to school, the cutest boy in eighth grade, possibly the whole world, said, "Didn’t you two wear those same outfits yesterday? What did you do, switch clothes with each other?" I spouted what we’d practiced on the nine block walk to school. "No," I lied, "We both have one of each and we didn’t see what the other one was wearing until it was too late. Ask my mom if you don’t believe me." He looked unconvinced.
     Dad was wrong: the neighborhood may have been less ritzy than the one we’d moved from, but the girls at this new school were fashion plates. Everyday, they wore nylon stockings; we could only wear them on Sundays. Roger VanEss leather purses hung casually over their arms as they sashayed through the halls like runway models. Hair was perfectly ratted into bouffant dos. They wore expensive Capezio shoes—slim, pointy-toed flats, the soles as thin as cardboard. We wore old-fashioned penny loafers with bright copper pennies tucked into the coin slot; what everyone had worn at our old school.
     My father had been a scholarship student at a Saint Paul military academy. His folks couldn’t afford the regulation shoes and bought his black oxfords from Thom McAn. Every time there was an inspection, Dad received demerits. He shared with me that he’d started freshman year at 5’2" and grew eight inches before graduation. His mother, an excellent seamstress, altered his uniform until there was no extra fabric left. According to Dad, the cost of another uniform put a real strain on the family budget but it was having the wrong shoes that he wouldn’t forget.
     It had stuck in his craw that he’d been the poor kid in a class of well-to-do boys. Dad must have identified with the kids in our new neighborhood, putting himself in their place, wrongly assuming they wouldn’t have new outfits for the five days when no uniform was required.
     I understood where Dad was coming from, but it stuck in my craw that he expected my sister and me to suffer in the same outfit two days running. This is probably why, no matter how tight our finances, my children always had new stuff for school. And why I’ve never been able to think of that Bobbie Brooks Watch Plaid outfit without cringing.