Never Been Worn
The other day I was sitting in the teacher’s lounge with my friend, Cindy, who was thumbing through the classified ads, asking if anyone wanted to go in on a wiener dog. After flipping through a few more pages she got to the used clothing section. “You know, every time I see an ad for a wedding dress with the phrase ‘Never Been Worn’ above it I can’t help but wonder about that woman’s story,” she said. I glanced over the ads. It was truly depressing. Every day there were thousands, maybe millions of women across the country who were selling their unworn wedding dresses. Every day there was another woman whose dream got crushed and left hanging in her closet.
It seems like the concept of “dreams” has been coming up a lot lately. Yesterday I was reading Romeo and Juliet with my freshmen and we got to the section where Mercutio makes a speech about Queen Mab, the fairy who runs across people’s noses while they sleep and tells them what to dream. After a long monologue about how women always dream about kisses and lawyers only dream about fees, Romeo finally tells Meructio to shut up because he “talk’est of nothing.” Mercutio replies, “True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind.”
In our early years we’re never concerned about the vanity or the constancy of our dreams. For example, when I was 12 years old I dreamed about going to mime school, which makes absolutely no sense because I’ve never been able to keep my mouth shut for more than 30 seconds at a time. Then, when I was 18, I dreamed about going to New York and becoming and advertising executive. I pictured myself in a gray suit and black stilettos clicking along Madison Avenue while I shouted into a cell phone and hailed a cab at the same time. My father told me that I could go to New York as long as I got a gun and a dog. Suddenly my vision changed to an image of me being pulled along 42nd street by a snarling Doberman Pinscher. I’d be wearing baggy sweatpants and a puffy orange ski jacket with reflectors, pointing mace and a hand gun at anyone who came within 20 feet of me. At that point I decided it would be better to go to college in Colorado. I didn’t want my dad to worry himself to death, it was too expensive, and it didn’t matter anyway in the long run because I ended up teaching high school, and I sure as hell wouldn’t do that in New York even if I had a machine gun and a pack of wolves.
After I graduated college all I could dream about was getting married, and I invested a great deal of time in fantasy planning. I pictured a really romantic proposal, sharing the happy news, picking out the dress, who would be in my wedding party, the first dance at the reception, and of course the wedding night when we would play Scrabble into the wee hours of the morning. (Hey, my parents are reading this, people.) Of course I never allowed myself to think beyond the wedding and the fact that I would have this husband sitting around farting, leaving his socks all over the place and folding the towels the wrong way (that is IF he folded them at all). But it didn’t matter. I still enjoyed dreaming about my wedding. One time when I was getting fitted for a bridesmaid’s dress I almost bought a wedding dress for myself. It was exactly what I had pictured, with the perfect balance of white satin and sparkley things, and it was on sale for $400.00. “Should I buy this?” I asked my friend. “I mean, I know I’m not dating anybody right now, but what are the chances that I will cross paths with a dress like this again? And on SALE!” She looked at me with a mixture of pity and amusement and asked, “What’s a guy going to think when he comes to your house for a first date and you have this wedding dress hanging there?” Perhaps it was going a little too far. I guess pre-printed wedding invitations with the words “INSERT GROOM’S NAME HERE” were definitely out of the question.
Now that I’m almost 30 I have pretty much stopped dreaming for myself. I didn’t notice it until the other day. I woke up, stretched, stared at the wall for a second, and realized that there was definitely something missing from the closet of my soul. As it turns out, Mercutio was wrong. A dream is still worth something, even if it’s never been worn. You can just try it on now and then. You can run your hands over the fabric and appreciate its beauty. Then you can put it back in the closet, confident that it’s safe and available whenever you need it.
It seems like the concept of “dreams” has been coming up a lot lately. Yesterday I was reading Romeo and Juliet with my freshmen and we got to the section where Mercutio makes a speech about Queen Mab, the fairy who runs across people’s noses while they sleep and tells them what to dream. After a long monologue about how women always dream about kisses and lawyers only dream about fees, Romeo finally tells Meructio to shut up because he “talk’est of nothing.” Mercutio replies, “True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind.”
In our early years we’re never concerned about the vanity or the constancy of our dreams. For example, when I was 12 years old I dreamed about going to mime school, which makes absolutely no sense because I’ve never been able to keep my mouth shut for more than 30 seconds at a time. Then, when I was 18, I dreamed about going to New York and becoming and advertising executive. I pictured myself in a gray suit and black stilettos clicking along Madison Avenue while I shouted into a cell phone and hailed a cab at the same time. My father told me that I could go to New York as long as I got a gun and a dog. Suddenly my vision changed to an image of me being pulled along 42nd street by a snarling Doberman Pinscher. I’d be wearing baggy sweatpants and a puffy orange ski jacket with reflectors, pointing mace and a hand gun at anyone who came within 20 feet of me. At that point I decided it would be better to go to college in Colorado. I didn’t want my dad to worry himself to death, it was too expensive, and it didn’t matter anyway in the long run because I ended up teaching high school, and I sure as hell wouldn’t do that in New York even if I had a machine gun and a pack of wolves.
After I graduated college all I could dream about was getting married, and I invested a great deal of time in fantasy planning. I pictured a really romantic proposal, sharing the happy news, picking out the dress, who would be in my wedding party, the first dance at the reception, and of course the wedding night when we would play Scrabble into the wee hours of the morning. (Hey, my parents are reading this, people.) Of course I never allowed myself to think beyond the wedding and the fact that I would have this husband sitting around farting, leaving his socks all over the place and folding the towels the wrong way (that is IF he folded them at all). But it didn’t matter. I still enjoyed dreaming about my wedding. One time when I was getting fitted for a bridesmaid’s dress I almost bought a wedding dress for myself. It was exactly what I had pictured, with the perfect balance of white satin and sparkley things, and it was on sale for $400.00. “Should I buy this?” I asked my friend. “I mean, I know I’m not dating anybody right now, but what are the chances that I will cross paths with a dress like this again? And on SALE!” She looked at me with a mixture of pity and amusement and asked, “What’s a guy going to think when he comes to your house for a first date and you have this wedding dress hanging there?” Perhaps it was going a little too far. I guess pre-printed wedding invitations with the words “INSERT GROOM’S NAME HERE” were definitely out of the question.
Now that I’m almost 30 I have pretty much stopped dreaming for myself. I didn’t notice it until the other day. I woke up, stretched, stared at the wall for a second, and realized that there was definitely something missing from the closet of my soul. As it turns out, Mercutio was wrong. A dream is still worth something, even if it’s never been worn. You can just try it on now and then. You can run your hands over the fabric and appreciate its beauty. Then you can put it back in the closet, confident that it’s safe and available whenever you need it.
posted by Alice | 7:42 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home