uniforms, “then you can kill me now. Please. It'll be a merciful ending, no one will blame you.”
“Tempting as that offer is, I think we'll just settle for getting you kitted out,” Mom said, pulling out a list the school had sent her.
Kitted out? Even my mother has gone English. Clearly it's up to me to take a stand and be the last bastion of Americanism in my family. Well, except for using cool words like grotty. Grotty is good.
Mom dragged me over to a rack of horrible maroon clothes and consulted the List. I swear, Dru, only the fact that everyone else at this horrible Butt-mouth school I'm being forced to attend will be wearing the same thing is keeping me from taking Mom's Visa card and going home.
Since I have nothing else to do, I'll attach the list here so you can suffer with me.
Gobottom Senior Girls School Uniform
Item: Blazer
Description: Maroon, with school emblem
What I think: The school emblem looks like one of those spaceship/satellite thingies from the seventies that were all pointy legs and bits of aluminum poking out at odd angles. I have no idea what it's supposed to be. And maroon? Maroon sucks! Who looks good in maroon? Who can color coordinate around maroon? Maroon makes me look like I'm going to barf.
Item: School tie
Description: Maroon and teal diagonal stripes.
What I think: It's crap!
“A tie?” I asked Mom when she held one up. “Excuse me, but I am not a male.. I don't wear ties.”
She shoved it in the basket, muttering something about the colors hurting her eyes. Fine. I might have to wear it, but no one said where. I think I'll wear it around my waist, under my clothes. A tie! Can you even imagine it? And who came up with the combination of maroon and teal, two utterly gross colors that together are so repulsive they can strike people dead a halfmile away?
Item: Blouse
Description: White. (Note blouse is a normal style shirt, not baggy with a soft collar.)
What I think: Honestly, Dru, it's terrible. The material is thirty percent polyester, and you know I can't wear polyester. It doesn't breathe! You wouldn't think a white blouse would be a problem, would you? I have tons of white tops, I pointed that out to Mom, but according to the Pink Hair, “The school is ever so particular what the girls wear. If you don't want a demerit, dearie, you just stay with the standard blouse.”
Great. I'm going to look like a geek. A tie and a stupid white blouse.
Item: Skirt
Description: Teal, pleated all around, knee-length
What I think: It looks like something my grandmother wears to church. Knee-length? I don't think so. Thank heavens I took Home Ec last year and learned how to hem. The hemline on this puppy is going up several inches.
Item: Tights
Description: Heavy black tights or white/gray knee socks.
What I think: White socks with a skirt? Are they out of their minds? And heavy black tights (tights are nylons)? Black, yes, black is chic, black is slimming, black is cool, but the tights the Pink Lady brought out were positively hairy, they were so thick! I let Mom buy them, but just as soon as I find a real store, I'm buying some proper black nylons. Ones that don’t have to be shaved to be worn.
Item: Shoes
Description: Black with low heels
What I think: Ha ha ha ha ha! Low heels, my Aunt Fanny! (Oh, BTW, the word “fanny” means something totally different in England. They call it a front bottom. I think you can guess what that is.)
There're optional teal “trousers” (do these people have a different word for everything?) that I could get, but they are worse than the skirt, and besides, with a skirt I can show off my legs. So I nixed the trousers. Then there's the PE stuff—a white polo shirt with the stupid school logo that's not too hideous, maroon bicycle shorts that are going to let everyone see that I need to lose ten more pounds, a teal “games skirt” that I refuse to even think about (it's for tennis and hockey. Right, like I want to play hockey in a miniskirt. What sort of pervs made up this list?), boots for hockey and “football” (another example of the English getting it backward—football here means soccer), and white tennis shoes, called, for some inexplicable reason, “trainers.”
Oh, poop, BRB.
Back! I had to answer the phone, since the Oldsters were too busy examining something in the