Shine on, Shine on Harvest Moon

I've been tagged by Philly Chief, and the the rules of the tag are as follows:

1. Describe my earliest memory where the memory is clear, and where "clear" means I can depict at least three details.
2. Give an estimate of my age at the time.
3. Tag five other bloggers with this meme.

The year was 1972. Millions of Americans developed banjophobia brought on by too many viewings of Deliverance. Michael Jackson was singing a creepy love song about a rat. Mark Spitz was winning gold medals while sporting a porntastic mustache and bikini bottoms. I was busy being four.

I have to say that my fourth year will never be dubbed as my "Damn, that Girl Be Stylin' and Shit" year. In fact, I failed miserably at any sense of style until I was, well, I'm still not sure how I fare. Anyway, I had a pair of red, double knit, 100% polyester pants. Pants that had the crease sewn down the front. What the fuck was that even supposed to be? Like the pants weren't bad enough being double knit, so someone got the bright idea of sewing a crease down the front so they'd score even more points on the awkwardly ugly scale. But for some reason, I was fascinated by the stretchiness of those red, itchy pants.

Seriously fascinated. They stretched, and to me that was pure magic. I didn't have to unzip, unbutton or unsnap anything. They just pulled down, then back up. They were surely one of the greatest inventions of all time, albeit one of the ugliest and itchiest.

One day I was demonstrating the fabulous stretchiness of these pants by pulling them down to my hips and then pulling them back up. Down, up, down up, down up. I could've done that for hours. This particular demonstration of stretchy wonderment happened to be in view of my brother, Doug. He was 9 at the time, and he didn't feel that his little sister pulling her pants up and down was appropriate. He thought it was just way gross that he could see his sister's GIRL underwear that had pink rosebuds on them. I think these particular pair of drawers came from JCPenney. They had matching spaghetti strap undershirts, too, and they came in all colors of rosebuds, pink, yellow, green and blue. Does anyone else remember these? Maybe they were from Sears. Those sets are the only underthings I wore as a kid - I'm pretty sure until I was 16. I really wanted the "days of the week" panties set, but I never got them. I also never got an E-Z Bake Oven or a Sno-Cone Machine, and I still harbor bitterness about all three.

Oh yeah, I was telling a story, wasn't I?

So, I was standing there in front of my brother pulling my pants up and down, (now there's something I never thought I'd write) and he gave me this superior, snotty, dare I say persnickety look and said, "I'm gonna go tell, Mom". Rather than stopping and begging him not to rat me out, I decided that I'd show that would-be narkosaurus. And show is exactly what I did. I turned around, pulled the red, stretchy, double knit 100% polyester pants and the rosebud, girl underwear down, wiggled my tiny, little bare butt at him and taunted him with, "So go tell, Mom".

That pushed him over the edge. He was "really going to tell Mom, now. You're gonna be in big trouble". He ran off, and I stood there in a panicked state, thinking of some excuse that I could come up with for showing my brother my naked butt. It had to be something so good it would save me from having the flyswatter land across my previously unclothed bum, and prevent me from having to hear the "you're going to make Jesus cry" speech. Then it hit me- the excuse, not the flyswatter. I had the perfect defense. It was an accident. Somehow in my four year-old mind, that totally made sense. I mean, people's pants and underwear accidentally fall down in front of their brother all the time, right?

But my brother didn't tell our mother. Probably because he didn't want to be branded a tattletale for the rest of his life. How far would he have gotten with that stigma attached to him like a huge, festering boil threatening to burst at any minute? Or it could have been, that at nine years old he realized that, given our circumstances, it was us seven kids against the parents. He knew we had to stick together against The Enemy, even when we were baring our asses at each other.

Okay, the rules say that I have to tag five people, but I don't like rules. So, I'm going to tag anyone who ever owned a pair of double knit, 100% polyester, magical stretchy pants.

Take Care,
Babs - Who still isn't above mooning someone, should they threaten to tell on her.