Sunday 11 December 2016

"Anna" and "Elsa"

appeared on my screen yesterday. Our neighbour across the road sent me a picture of her two granddaughters dressed up as the two characters from "Frozen". 
I haven't seen the film. I don't want to. I think she is also heartily sick of the whole thing. But, she did make the most wonderful "dress up" dress for the younger one. The older girl already had her "Elsa" costume.
I am trying to remember "dressing up" as a child - and I can't. The Senior Cat can't remember me doing it either. Oddly, I don't think I did. I can remember wearing a costume and fancy dress but I can't remember just dressing up to play. 
I know my brother had a "cowboy" outfit and Middle Cat had to have one too but I didn't have anything like that.  I know I pretended to be things and do things but I didn't dress up to do it. We didn't have a box of old clothes for that purpose. It's odd now that I think about it.
I remember being dressed as a rabbit for a church Christmas party. It must have been the  year I was about to turn three. My paternal grandmother made the costume. It was ideal for me.  It meant I could "hop" around the floor. I stayed in character the entire evening.
Some years later we had to go to school in fancy dress for a Christmas party. Again my paternal grandmother to the rescue. She turned me into a "letter box". She covered a cardboard box in red crepe paper and put me inside it with holes for my head and arms. It had the necessary posting times and so on printed on the outside. I won a prize for that - a chocolate frog - because it was so completely different from all the princesses and fairies and nurses in the room. Now I wonder where she got the idea from and I wish she was around to ask.
I sometimes see children who have "dressed up" in the shopping centre. They will be wearing a Batman or Superman or Spiderman outfit...or a fairy costume. You have to be careful talking to them because you don't know who they are right then - Batman or Brendan? It is easy to get it wrong.
And there are those odd mixtures - the trainers and jeans with the tutu and the sparkly t-shirt - which suggest that they could be either themselves or someone else.
I love the way they seem to completely lacking in self-consciousness  about dressing up and appearing in public. They don't seem to mind having their faces painted either.  I am sure I would have protested loudly if anyone had tried. 
Maybe I didn't want to dress up. I squirm at the thought that I was so self-conscious at such an early age. 

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