Strings

One of the perks of growing up conservative is that there is a fairly small pool of style you can choose from. (Yes, I said perk, I know a lot of my friends would disagree) Even with the small pool there is a style to be had. There is a cool way to dress even if you’re Amish. There is a cool way to do your hair.

So says Andrea on WritersBlock02.

She is one of those snarky clever young bloggers that I have to read with caution because they make me feel like I am old and deliberate, kind of like Walter Cronkite.

But yes, between Andrea's post and another incident, which I will get to later, I was reliving this odd memory of how in my youth there was a right way and a wrong way to tie your covering strings, proving, I think, that fashion is an inborn thing that you can't legislate away with a 20-page Odning.

By "covering" I mean the white cap that Amish and Mennonite women and girls wear. We started young, like at six weeks old, the first time we showed up at church. The conservative end of the Anabaptist spectrum requires strings on coverings. In the old days I'm sure their purpose was to tie under the chin and keep the cap from flying away with a stiff breeze. But later, when coverings were anchored on with pins, strings took on a life of their own, and became something that the church fathers required as a way to keep the covering large, since no one was going to have a tiny little cap on the back of the head and strings dangling from that.

And believe me there was a protocol with covering strings.

If you were sloppy like me you left them flapping in the wind during the week.

If you were really insecure you chewed on them during school.

If you were any sort of cool you tucked them down the neck of your dress. This was The Only Cool way to treat strings. And it had to be down the back of your dress, not the front, even if you went to public high school and mystified classmates asked if they were holding up your undergarments.

You had to tie your strings for church. I don't think even the coolest, most rebellious girls at our church flouted this one.

When you were little, your mom got you ready for church and tied your strings tightly under your chin, or more often and far worse, off to the side, under your left jaw. Terrible.

By the time you tied your own covering you would rather wear your grandma's old gray Amish dress with pins to church than have your covering tied tight under your chin. No, you tied a little bow down lower that landed about two inches below the clavicle. The bow had to be small and neat and even. It could not tilt to one side. And the trailing ribbons had to be even.

I could not manage such a bow. I just couldn't. It was always uneven and cockeyed and sloppy. Of course my big sister Rebecca always had chic little bows but I simply didn't have it in me, no matter how much time I spent at it, going cross-eyed during Dad's Sunday morning prayers during family worship in the living room.

And I have this awful memory of being ready for church and my big brother looked at me with disgust in his eyes and his voice and exclaimed, "You're going to church with your covering tied like THAT? It looks like a shoo-bandel gnipp!"

Well, a shoo-bandel gnipp is a shoestring knot or bow. Sigh. He was right, much as it hurt.

Finally I learned how to make a square knot, and I started tying my strings in a neat little square knot, and it worked just right for me, and was easy but looked neat and tidy, and I may even have started a bit of a trend, probably the only time in my life that I did.

So yes, "even with the small pool there was a style to be had."

The other incident.

Yesterday Jenny came home from school holding her right arm to her chest. She and a friend had been racing for the door of the play shed when break was over. Jenny's shoelaces were untied, and her friend happened to step on one stray lace, and Jenny went flying into the gravel.

I took her to the doctor today and yes, there's a small break in her right radius. The doctor had mercy on our upcoming travel plans and didn't put on a full cast, just a lower molded cast thing like a small canoe with a sharp upward bend at the elbow, then it's held on with Ace bandages and supported in a sling.

This could make traveling overseas really interesting but it could be far worse.

But the reason this incident velcroed in my mind with the covering strings of the past was that I couldn't help but think that if Jenny had had a proper shoo-bandel gnipp like I've told her a hundred times, she wouldn't be in such pain and such a pickle now.

Quote of the Day:

"YOU'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH"

--A big sign that ought to be hung around the neck of a certain sweet young Oregon maiden who is off at EBI for six weeks, according to her protective family