Uniforms

I was not a pre-teen fashion plate.

The end of summer brought on yet another sick feeling in my stomach because it meant back-to-school shopping. I went to a co-ed Catholic school called St. Theresa and the Sisters of Perpetual Chastity (or something like that). It sounds more like an eighties punk rock band than a fine religious learning environment. Actually, it was neither.

We were all required to wear uniforms. The girls wore maroon jumpers with white button down, sailor-collared shirts underneath, maroon knee socks and sensibly unfashionable black loafers. You could tell how old and/or slutty a girl was by how far above her knee she dared to put the hem of her jumper. Knee high was regulation. The school emblem, which was St. Theresa standing in front of a bleeding heart, was sewn securely over the left breast – or what would one day be a breast, again depending on the girl. No piercings, jewelry or accessories of any kind were allowed, not even watches.

The boys’ uniforms were similar in tastelessness and design: gray wool slacks, a maroon blazer (with emblem sewn over our heart), a black or maroon tie of regulated length and width, sensible black loafers and black socks. We were like the children of the damned only less fashionable and Arian looking. Our Italian and Irish blood pumped feverishly through our growing bodies with steely determination. Only there was no outlet. However, our fiery temperaments, deeply ingrained in our genes, meant we could kick the shit out of those blue-eyed, blonde haired freaks. Well, I couldn’t but most of the girls in my class could have.

There were only one or two stored in the city that catered to the uniforms of the Catholic schools. And there was only one where I, in particular, could shop. It was called Silverberg’s Men’s Clothing and Apparel: All Tailoring Done on Premise. I thought that was the full name, and it still sends a shiver down my spine to hear it. Silverberg’s was a huge red brick building that stood menacingly in the middle of a city block. The mannequins in the windows sported all the latest fashions from parochial schools around the city, as well as other the more popular look sweeping my neighborhood at the time: Z. Cavaricci. Anybody who was Anybody had Z. Cavarricci pants, jeans, shirts, whatever. They were a more stylish version of MC Hammer’s parachute pants. High-waisted, with all different kinds of buckles, snaps and zippers in that particular area, you often needed to give yourself an extra half an hour to get ready to go out to make sure everything was buckled, snapped and zipped correctly. (I remember how my mother used to go crazy doing the laundry having to check every zip-up pocket in the pants to make sure there was no loose change or anything left about.) These pants, Cavaricci’s came in pleated or un-pleated slacks and jeans, were constructed so to hug the waist, then flair out at the hips and thighs, eventually tapering down in a gentle slope to the ankle. If you were built like me, you looked rather like a pear.

The other fashion craze sweeping my neighborhood at the time, and available at Silverberg’s, was Lotto sneakers. Lotto was the first company to take full advantage of the velcro fad. Not only did their sneakers velcro open and closed, no, they also had a Lotto symbol on the side (which looked very similar to the number sign) which would velcro on and off. The cool thing about this was that when you bought a pair of these Lotto’s you also received extra, different colored Lotto side velcro patches. You could therefore match almost every outfit in your limited pre-teen/teenage wardrobe. If you were “funky” you could even mix and match. It really did not get cooler than that. People were known to change the colors of their Lotto’s ten times a day. The epitome of cool meant walking down the street in your Z. Cavaricci jeans with your new Lotto sneakers.

My trips to Silverberg’s in late August never involved buying Lotto’s or Cavaricci’s. And as I stood looking longingly at the fierce mannequins in the window my stomach was raging and churning inside of me because I knew what was in store. My mother would grab my hand and pull me through the front doors all of a sudden the picture of an efficient, determined modern woman. She was all business in these situations perhaps because she disliked them almost as much as me. Once inside the store my heart would sink even lower. It never changed. The smell of moth balls and sweat hung in the air. Although sleekly redesigned sometime in the seventies Silverberg’s still felt like it belonged to another time. Amber light was hidden somewhere in the ceilings and cast ghostly shadows against the red brick walls. The fluorescent lights in the center of the room never seemed to be working all at once. The first floor was one huge room filled with suits, jackets and slacks of all colors and sizes. These garments hung along the walls as well as on standing racks which formed aisles throughout the floor. At any other time I would have been running and diving through these racks pretending I was Indiana Jones being chased by evil Nazis trying to take the ark of the covenant away from me. Not today.

A tall, slim man stylishly dressed in a timeless gray suit comes over to help us. His slicked back hair does not conceal the fact that he is prematurely gray and balding. My mother immediately steps up to greet him.

--Hello. We need a few things: a suit jacket, a few ties and some dress socks for my older boy. She indicates my brother. And for my other son—where did he go?

I was shivering and sweating not two feet away trying to hide behind a grossly, unhuman looking mannequin and wishing I could disappear. If I were closer to the wall I would try and pull out each brick, one at a time, looking for a secret door that would take me out of there into the sewers where I would battle through puddles of slime and rats until I came up in some distant foreign land. Indiana Jones would have found one. Or he would have used his whip to knock the mannequins over thus barring the path of attacking salesmen, their greasy hair falling in their face. Knocking over racks of suits to further impede their progress he would reach the front doors of the store, a sly smile forming on his face. Hitting the street he would whirl around, pull out his gun and shoot the neon sign screaming Silverberg’s that hung over the entryway. It would fall just in time to pin the suits underneath its weight, letting off sparks that would eventually cause the entire building to burn down.

I could only shiver, sweat and hide.

My mother, without even looking, reaches out her arm and found my shoulder, pulling me out from behind the mannequin. She smiles politely through gritted teeth and a tense jaw at the salesman.
--My other son will need to go…upstairs.
The salesman looks me up and down, nods and smiles knowingly at my mother.
--I understand.

Yeah, I understand too.