flooding back in—as well as the fabrics, the movement, the textures.
I may have gone a little bit overboard. It’s possible I tilted a bit more toward “circus clown” than fashionista that first year. But it didn’t matter. The transformation saved me. It gave me something to do—something to look forward to and get excited about. It gave me a way to call attention to myself that was positive.
In a situation full of downsides, it was undeniably an upside.
I might never drive again, but dammit—I had a fun wardrobe.
And, to be truthful, through all that, the memory of Duncan Carpenter was kind of my inspiration.
He was definitely fashion-fearless.
I thought of him a lot during that year—his collection of pants and ties alone was great food for thought. If there was a crazy pair of pants in the world, he owned it. He had plain cotton pants in every color from red to green to purple, as well as seersucker, and a whole collection of patchwork madras. He had pink pants with flamingos, blue pants with palm fronds, and yellow pants covered in pineapples. Honestly: American flags, hibiscus flowers, hamburgers, dalmatians.
Not to mention his rule that he’d wear any tie any student ever gave him, which gave rise to a whole collection of doozies: rubber ducks, flying pigs, ice-cream cones, Frida Kahlo, and even Einstein sticking out his tongue. The kids got competitive, trying to find him the craziest, most shocking ties. And from dollar bills to Homer Simpson to cans of Spam, he wore them all. On picture day every year, he wore a tie with his faculty photo from the year before printed all over it for a picture-within-a-picture infinity effect.
And don’t even get me started on his socks.
It was more about the surprise of it than anything. The whimsy, and the naughtiness, and the rule-breaking. It had an effect on other people. Kids teased him about his fashion choices, and so did adults, and he liked it. It was something he did for himself—but also something he did for others. It was a way of making his own rules—but doing it so cheerfully that nobody minded. It started conversation after conversation in the loveliest, most self-deprecating way.
It disarmed people. It relaxed them. It put them in a good mood.
I mean, this was a guy whose permanent faculty name tag, which should have just listed his name and department, like, “Duncan Carpenter/Kindergarten + Athletics,” every year, mysteriously came back with a “typo” so that it read: “Duncan Carpenter/Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
That was Duncan: a human mood-enhancer.
Wearing the flower hat to school that day did many great things for me—but I never expected it to give me a taste of what it felt like to be Duncan Carpenter.
It felt pretty good.
In the wake of that flower-hat day, the number one question I started asking myself when getting dressed in the morning became, “Is it fun?”
Later, I would read a bunch of books on color theory and the psychology of joy that would explain exactly how bright colors and whimsy create actual, neurological responses of happiness in people. But back then, I didn’t know any science. I just knew that wearing a red dress covered in flowers to work with polka-dot sandals made me feel better.
And I’d really, really needed to feel better.
Now, this morning, I had many, many complex feelings about seeing him again—but one of them was definitely excitement. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to see him again. And I wanted him to see me again—or maybe even see me for the first time—all new-and-improved, no longer mousy, no longer invisible, no longer trying so hard to disappear.
Which made my choice of outfit this morning extra critical.
This was a way of standing up for myself. A way of saying I’d had all this color inside me all along. He hadn’t chosen me back then, but back then, I’d been hiding.
I wasn’t hiding anymore.
I was a lady with a flower hat now.
Faced with darkness, I had chosen flowers. And polka dots. And light.
And if anybody on earth would appreciate the hell out of that, it was Duncan Carpenter.
* * *
And then—finally, at last, and way too soon—it was eight forty-five. Time to head over for the nine o’clock meeting.
Since waking up, I’d changed outfits no less than seven times—finally settling on an apple-red shirtdress, a pale blue polka-dotted scarf around my neck, stewardess-style, and blue open-toed platform sandals that matched my blue pedicure. Nowadays, my hair was down past