One day my four-year-old approached me in the kitchen and announced, “Look, Mama! I’m ready to go to the party!”
Indeed, Kacie was supposed to attend a birthday party in a couple hours. She was wearing her Princess Barbie nightgown.
“Kacie, you can’t wear a nightgown to a birthday party.”
“But it’s only a nightgown at NIGHT. Today it’s a dress.”
Immediately I thought back to my childhood. When I was growing up, there were rules about these sort of things. People understood the meaning of the word etiquette. We not only didn’t wear pajamas to birthday parties, we didn’t even wear play clothes. We wore party dresses, for crying out loud. We had standards. We had manners. This is what made America great.
All this was running through my head as I thought about Kacie’s request.
Kacie looked at me expectantly.
“All right,” I said. “But the Winnie the Pooh slippers have got to go,”
I’ve still got a few standards, after all.
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I’m old enough to remember when every woman and little girl wore not only a hat but gloves to church on Easter. And I don’t think I’ll ever get used to sitting next to someone on a plane wearing pajamas (cute on a child, but NOT classy on an adult!). I truly believe our society took a huge step backwards when the first seemingly innocent “casual Friday” came into being, because we tend to act like we dress.