wardrobe malfunction

When I was a very little girl, I was all about the dresses.  I only vaguely remember this phase, as I think it stopped in kindergarten or first grade: as my mom tells it, I came home from school one day very upset because the other kids could see my underwear while I was hanging upside down on the playground.  I don't recall that particular event, but I do recall the neighbor girl and boy distracting me on the top of the jungle gym, observing that I was as tall standing atop it as the nearest young tree.  While I paused, enchanted, she and the neighbor boy took the opportunity to look up my skirt.

I was a naked kid, and didn't feel any shame in that, but I guess being seen in one's underwear is less deliberate and therefore more embarrassing?  Or, perhaps more likely, I was ashamed at having been duped.  (They also once took me on a bike ride, further from home than I was allowed to go, and then all raced off and left me behind, straggling and pushing hard on the pedals while they all changed gears and climbed the hill on their powerful big-kid legs.  I was ashamed then, too, because I thought they wanted me to hang out with them, and now I was all by myself and lost, couldn't figure out how to get home.)  I don't think I learned modesty from the incident, because I remember being told gently at age 8 or 9 that from then on, pants and a shirt were required at the dinner table.  Sitting on the woven bar stools sans vetements left red waffle-patterns on one's sitting parts.  To this day I'm happy to change into my swimsuit on the beach, to prevent the bikini knot from digging into my spine on the drive there.

I never got back into dresses, though.  I'll put one on for a special event, but pack along a change of clothes because I really feel unnatural with my knees constantly pressed together, all feminine-like.  I think it strains my hips and my mental health.  The girls that wear cute little sundresses to work amaze me -- you're really comfortable, sitting there in that thing all day?  With your ankles daintily crossed?  Yeesh.  How do you drive in those four-inch heels?  Don't get me wrong, you look good enough to eat, but that kind of an outfit is just too high-maintenance for me.  I miss that brief grunge trend in the 90s when it was totally acceptable to wear a sundress over your skater jeans.