Dressing up

I didn’t really get teased that much when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong. I did get teased. Every male got teased. But I would sort of think that I would’ve got teased a lot more when I was kid since I definitely did some odd and/or unique things when I was a kid. For example, I was actually really into dressing-up, like with ties and suits and all, and would do so for school, especially on picture day. In one of my elementary school pictures I was wearing a tie and a suit handed down from a friend of my parents. The opportunity to dress well was actually something I looked forward to. When I was a bit older, on weekend nights when my parents would go out on their own and leave me home alone, one of the things I did was go into my dad’s closet and start trying on all his suits—he had like about six Brooks Brothers suits at the time—and I would strut in front of the mirror in a suit and tie, trying on different suits with different ties and seeing how they looked on me. It was like secret vice of mine.

One time in elementary school my parents had gotten me this clip-on tie to wear for a special occasion, and I decided to wear it to school just for the heck of it, because I thought it looked awesome. I think I was eight years old. When I was walking down the playground to class at the beginning of the day, an older kid I didn’t know saw me and was probably think: “Who is this dweeb?” And so he thinks it’d be funny to grab me by the tie and pull me towards him to intimidate me, like they do in the movies. But then when he grabs my clip-on tie and pulls it towards him, the tie comes right off and his friends laugh and he stands there with this clip-on tie in his hand. At that point, I was thinking quietly to myself: “Score one for the Joe.”

I didn’t really get teased that much when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong. I did get teased. Every male got teased. But I would sort of think that I would’ve got teased a lot more when I was kid since I definitely did some odd and/or unique things when I was a kid. For example, I was actually really into dressing-up, like with ties and suits and all, and would do so for school, especially on picture day. In one of my elementary school pictures I was wearing a tie and a suit handed down from a friend of my parents. The opportunity to dress well was actually something I looked forward to. When I was a bit older, on weekend nights when my parents would go out on their own and leave me home alone, one of the things I did was go into my dad’s closet and start trying on all his suits—he had like about six Brooks Brothers suits at the time—and I would strut in front of the mirror in a suit and tie, trying on different suits with different ties and seeing how they looked on me. It was like secret vice of mine.

One time in elementary school my parents had gotten me this clip-on tie to wear for a special occasion, and I decided to wear it to school just for the heck of it, because I thought it looked awesome. I think I was eight years old. When I was walking down the playground to class at the beginning of the day, an older kid I didn’t know saw me and was probably think: “Who is this dweeb?” And so he thinks it’d be funny to grab me by the tie and pull me towards him to intimidate me, like they do in the movies. But then when he grabs my clip-on tie and pulls it towards him, the tie comes right off and his friends laugh and he stands there with this clip-on tie in his hand. At that point, I was thinking quietly to myself: “Score one for the Joe.”

Dressing up