Sunday, March 06, 2005

unstripper

The last one seemed to go over well, so here's another random childhood thing.

When I was (again) sixish, I learned from somewhere or other (possibly my friend Elizabeth who not only had a teenaged sister and brother but also went to a Catholic school) about strippers--people who get paid to take their clothes off. This idea seemed a bit odd to me, a little like someone getting paid to brush their teeth, but I took it in stride. After all, my parents had explained that, although grownups called children silly for doing silly childish things, grownups themselves frequently did things that were just as silly but in a grownup way. So I figured that this was just another example of grownup silliness.

Upon further reflection, though, another thing was clear: If there were people who were paid to take their clothes off, then by analogy there must be other people who were paid to put their clothes on.

For quite some time after I made this deduction, I would announce to Mommy, when she came up to help me get ready for bed, "I'm going to do a strip show now," and then methodically take off my clothes--and then say "And now I'll do an unstrip show," and put on my nightgown. (There may have been prancing about and ABBA music involved--I don't recall--but if there was it was certainly of the "I'm a fairy princess" variety.)

Eventually I lost interest in unstrip shows, but I never really questioned my certainty that there were unstrippers. To this day I find myself speculating that this idea could be a gold mine of career possibilities.

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