The Fashion Show

Anytime mom and pop went to the Cleveland Symphony, or Playhouse, or Opera, they would leave us in the care of really interesting older teenagers. Activities were a big part of our formative and adolescent years as mom was strict on how much television my sister and I watched. She preferred we engage in mental and physical activity to stimulate our ‘play’ aspect of our personality. This rule applied even moreso when she was not home. So, each babysitter, and they were a select few, were screened for how creative this person could be. It was also important they liked younger children, either had brothers and sisters of their own, and came from a strong family usually respecting and encouraging the same values.

My sister and I liked to play dress-up, role-playing that had us performing a bunch of theatrics given the stage. The stage was usually a bedroom or living room floor with a sheet thrown down or put up as a curtain between two larger pieces of furniture. Since we had a huge baby grand piano, it served as either a cave, a shelter, or a teepee-depending on what performance we were going to give. Both my sister and I were eclectic in musical instrument-playing (piano) and I took ballet, gymnastics and ice-skating. Adopting a more diverse sports background, I was usually the ‘celebrity’ dancer, skater, or pianist; while my younger sister would join me in vocals and adopted the emcee role. This was her chance to rate my performance and both teach or learn a thing or two. It was intellectually and psychologically, good play that was constructive.

One of our favorite babysitters was a drama major and journalism minor in college, so she encouraged us to act with a script written, perhaps some dialogue and stuff in parenthesis (acted but not necessarily spoken). We had to be creative with just stuff we had around the house, brooms, mops, fancy clothes, etc.

The fashion show and Tanya Tucker’s, “Delta Dawn” made headlines for the memory marquee ! We gave our best performance and strutted as young people could. We were evaluated on balance in over-grown shoes, savior-fare with some bigger clothes and not falling too much over ourselves, and etiquette--telling the world what we wanted to do to improve it. In retrospect I still find myself laughing over how semi-ridiculous this may have looked to anyone; however, to us it was a memory my sister and I still talk about today.