The monkey made me do it

The Guardian Angels for the Fashion Impaired

It all started when my friend Mike responded to a compliment on his shirt with “Thanks, but my Mom bought it for me. I didn’t pick it out.” My friend AM jokingly asked him if his mom picked out ALL of his clothes. He blushed deeply. His friend Justin broke in and stood up for Mike, saying that his mom picked out HIS clothing too and Mike shouldn’t be ashamed. We decided they should both be ashamed.

This was our senior year in high school, and AM and I had spent four years specializing in the retraining of the nerdy and socialization of the socially inept. Justin and Mike were two of our best friends and two of what we thought were our most well-adjusted pupils, until we discovered that they still meekly allowed their mothers to dress them (and not well, unless you really go for dockers and polo shirts and colors so neutral as to be near-invisible). This could not stand. AM and I immediately founded the secret society of the Guardian Angels for the Fashion Impaired, and took it upon ourselves to get the boys a little style.

We started out with suspenders, bright red with a pattern of fire engines and rowdily striped for the second pair (hey, it was the early ‘90’s) (that's actually no excuse. We were/are dorks.), and snuck them into their mailboxes with crude packaging and labels identifying the givers as the Guardian Angels for the Fashion Impaired. The boys were of course highly suspicious of AM and me since this was hardly the first prank we pulled on them, but couldn’t conclusively prove that we had left the gifts since our tracks were covered admirably (nighttime delivery, cars parked a couple cow fields over, minimal giggling). We also had carte blanche from their families to do what we wanted with them, after they realized that we were the sole reason Mike and Justin could now make eye contact with girls.

AM and I were in the same typing class (dear god I’m old) and devised a smokescreen – many of the students used a class page on the computer system to pass electronic notes to each other during class. We created freshmen personalities and started chatting to each other about how clever we had been with the suspenders and how cuuuuuute the boys were. It was art, we captured the speech patterns perfectly and the boys bought it hook line and sinker (how could they not believe that someone had noticed their hotness?). They apologized to our straight faces about thinking that we would prank them and started asking our opinions about various frosh girls and if we thought they were the Guardian Angels.

Then we bought them socks (classic cars and ones with individual toes) and boxers (lobster patterned and lipstick patterned) and worked out ways to leave them on window ledges and tucked in lockers. We started upping the ante with our electronic crushes, getting to a semi-groupie status and beginning to frighten the boys. We discussed setting up a meeting with them only dressed in lingerie (red for AM, black for me). The boys flipped and ran to us scared out of their minds that some hideous freshman girls were going to attack them and smother them with satin and lace. They were both extremely shy and conservative, and the idea of a strange woman approaching them half-dressed was probably a recurring nightmare instead of a fantasy. AM and I played it perfectly, we started picking out the scariest girls and pointing them out, saying “ooh, I know it’s HER! She’s going to be in her panties and TACKLE YOU!!” They were paranoid, clutching their wild accessories in a sad attempt to shield themselves from the imagined freshman lust.

Our last package was delivered during the school day, as we were sitting eating lunch with them and discussing the coming attack (AM and I had a million contacts, we got the boxes mailed to the school secretary and had her come out and hand deliver). They got the boxes and the blood immediately drained from their faces at seeing the familiar chunky handwriting. AM and I played dumb, tried to steal the packages before the boys could whisk them off in to their bags or lockers, and forced them to open them at the table. Once they got to the lace, all the blood returned in a rush and Mike looked like he was going to faint. But we had wrapped lace around bow ties (clever little minxes, weren’t we) and merely included a formal invitation to meet them at Shari’s Restaurant the following weekend, wearing all that we had given them.

We got my little brother to videotape the meeting and fashioned halos out of wire and aluminum foil. I wore a black dress and AM wore a red one. As we walked in the door of the restaurant at the appointed time, both of their heads simultaneously met their palms and the SMACK resounded and drew stares from across the room. They immediately claimed to have known all along and to have been humoring us the whole time. Mmm-hmm. That’s why they had been sitting there in a mix of dread and curiosity, wearing mismatched suspenders and bowties and socks and boxers. Right.

posted by LadyJay @ 8:26 AM