My father would pick us up on the last day of school each June and take us for an all-you-can-eat extravaganza at Dairy Queen. I could keep ordering whatever I wanted until stuffed full of soft-serve like a messy, melty, sticky pinata. With a sugar buzz.
He would wake us up on Sunday mornings by blasting one of four records: Queen Greatest Hits, Abba Gold, Fleetwood Mac Rumours or Meatloaf Bat Out of Hell. And he'd make pancakes.
On Friday nights he would make a big production of letting us stay up late to watch Dukes of Hazzard, and we would eat popcorn out of a large red ceramic bowl. Which he still uses, exclusively when watching movies on Friday nights, when he has pulled out the old air-pop machine rather than taking the easy, microwaveable way out.
My mom was there, too, if you're wondering, but as more of a participant than an organizer.
As a single girl, I have a few rituals of my own.
I always use some rectangular side plates with weiner dogs on them when I have frozen burritos for dinner, while sitting alone on the couch watching nature shows. This is often.
I treat myself to a latte to congratulate myself and celebrate the money I've saved if I've been a responsible enough person to both take the streetcar AND be on time for work, rather than taking a taxi and being late*. This is infrequent.
When drinking wine alone in my apartment, I exclusively use an old plastic Empire Strikes Back mug that was given to me for free at an antique store. The guy said he felt bad charging me for it when I was so excited to find it. And it doesn't break if it gets inexplicably knocked over. This is (ahem)... sometimes?
I celebrate Fluevog Day**. This is every May 15.
Up until a few years ago, I never would have described myself as one of those girls obsessed with shoes. I was all about economy and functionality, and usually only had two pairs, a casual shoe and a non-casual shoe. Spending money on shoes seemed frivolous when I could use my income in useful ways, such as patron of the arts***.
My casual shoe was, unwaveringly, a pair of Converse high tops. These were replenished annually, because after about one year the rubber on the soles was almost worn through, and the rips in canvas threatened to tear the tops clean off if I made just one more false move. I would get a different colour every year****.
For my non-casual shoe, I strived to find something that was under $100 and a rare combination of being suitable for both for work and for formal occasions. I would wear them until they literally fell to pieces, which wasn't often, since outside of work I wore only my sneakers unless attending a formal event, which wasn't often.
The trouble was that try as I might, I was never really successful at closing the workwear-formalwear gap, and would go years at a time brandishing something not entirely appropriate for either. It would have been helpful to have a girl friend with the same shoe size so I could borrow for weddings and funerals and not have to worry about this, but I was not so lucky. Sara would have been the only candidate, and she wore a size six or six-and- a-half to my seven-and-a-half. Which sounds like it should be close, but it really isn't at all.
Everything changed several years ago when I wandered into the Fluevog store and found the perfect ankle boot solution. They seemed prohibitively expensive, so I looked at them from afar for a long time until one day I happened by the store with a Christmas bonus fresh in my bank account. I've since been an addict*****.
On Fluevog Day, every regular priced item in the store is 15% off, which probably doesn't seem like much, except when you remember that one pair can cost as much as a dishwasher******. Also, they give out cupcakes.
I like to be right about these things, so before I wrote this post I did a little research into the difference between "rituals" and "traditions". I have a horror of finding myself guilty of errors of semantics.
If you're going to differentiate "rituals" from "traditions", it would appear that "rituals" are ceremonial acts, which can either be repeated or be random and new, and "traditions", while similar, are usually practices which are passed down through generations.
It seems a bit sad that unless I one day produce young, none of the above examples will ever evolve to tradition status. Even if I do release spawn, some of these rituals simply aren't going to make it through to the next generation. Unless my kids wake me up Sunday mornings blaring Fleetwood Mac and serving pancakes - because that will never, ever be me unless said kids are content to wait in bed until mid-afternoon. Fluevog Day will also die with me, as far as any potential family is concerned, because that would involve having a fuck of a lot of money to spend on family footwear.
*Total cost of TTC and grande latte - about $8. Total cost of taxi - about $10.
**http://www.fluevog.com/
***money spent generously on T-shirts and beer when watching musicians perform at bars.
****I still do this, so I guess this probably also counts as a ritual. Do I really have more than one shoe-related ritual? Lame.
*****As footnotes go, elaborating on this borders on ridiculous. Stay tuned for "Bigfoot", the next installment in drinking-for-two.
******I got out of the store for a mere $250 this year, which seemed like quite the bargain. This photo doesn't do them justice. Even so... anyone wanna grab a milkshake after the sock hop?
I can't believe you made no mention of Slotoberfest and how upset you were when I told you one of our sitters uses "your mug" regularly.
ReplyDeleteSlotoberfest is practically a person to me. I would not do justice to its presence in just a few sloppy lines.
Delete(being practically a person, of course I was a little disturbed to think of it being passed around like a pack of gum or a bong when I'm not there).