I am a Winner!

One of my favourite bloggers, Mrs Woog@woogworld was discussing senior formals and the frocks girlies were wearing these days, and I was prompted to remember this outfit I thought appropriate for mine.
sue elliott • a day ago


I had a long brown and white searsucker jobbie that looked more table cloth than formal dress, but I was waffer thin with big tits and it all went with an attitude of 'don't fuck with me' Dress cost me 20 bucks! If only I could look so good today. ah!

Mrs Woog Mod sue elliott • 20 hours ago




Brown and White! Brave and interesting. Throw SEERSUCKER into the mix and we have ourselves a winner! Bravo Sue xx




Well fancy that, after all these years I am winner, and I like it, so I spent the rest of the day tracking down the bloody photo which I knew was somewhere, cos that's how I remembered the dress so clearly.




Because I am of an age, I have lots of photo albums, some of them in excellent order and some that have been picked over and abused, you know as happens with ugly fashions and old flames.




Anyway I was up to the last one and I was very sure that it wouldn't be in there, but bugger me there it was. So I snapped it on my phone and here it is 40 years later. I bloody love technology, even if the reflection of my sad old face in the computer screen is in such stark contrast to the sweet young thing in that photo.




I asked Stevie's permission to post the fella's face, cos I don't know what the protocol is even though I haven't named him nor have I seen him in more than 4 decades - yeh I am shit at keeping in touch. SO I have sort of vicarious permission, and voila here is my brown and white seersucker dress from 1976. We were an eclectic pair, me in my tablecloth and him in his cravat, we were sober amongst the drunks and arrived in his somewhat beaten up old escort which we thought was a damn fine chariot mostly because it didn't come fitted with a parental driver, and we danced til we fell and didn't go to the after party. It was a lovely night. I can't remember what shoes I wore cos no doubt I kicked 'em off early to go barefoot. I remember feeling comfortable and didn't spend even a millisecond worrying about my face or my hair or my dress, I just ate and danced and danced and danced.




It does shock me just what an industry senior formals have become.




At least one whole term of year 12 is now spent discussing dresses and suits and car hire and makeup rehearsals and when to get drunk and how drunk to get, and the money spent is now many times what I spent on my wedding dress and the 4 bridesmaids frocks too.




So things have really changed. That's not a shocker.




But there has been quite the discussion here, about how 'old' kids are today and I think we all reached at least a tacit agreement that an 18 year old today is considerably YOUNGER than in my day, even if this is contradicted by the glamour and sophistication evident at the formals.




Today's lot are more closeted I reckon. They are allowed to run less amok and they fend less for themselves, and that's rightly so due to all the extra dangers and the faster pace of life.




My girl went nowhere on her own, I wouldn't even let her catch the bus into town cos 'people get raped on the bus'. She had every protection device invented and I insisted she wear 'em all when out rollerblading, wrist, hand, elbow, and knee guards as well as the helmet - hmm she didn't go too often - no surprises there. But I used to travel from Wynnum to The Gabba by train and bus and run the gauntlet of dirty old men hanging out of The Gabba pub to get to Gymnastics twice a week. I stopped doing gym when I was 13, not because of the heckling but because the boobs got in the way. I would never have allowed my girl to travel like that, and now she is even more protective of the grandie boy.




I was married and had a mortgage when I was 19. I was balancing budgets in the adult world and planning meals and doing all the domestics and studying and working as well as burning the candle at both ends cos, well I was 19 and had all that fucking fabulous energy.




Your average 19 year old today still lives at home and enjoys the clean clothes and prepared meals that the parent/s provide, and of course if they are a little short on the readies, well Mum might dip into the cookie jar to help 'em out there too. They might leave home but it's very common to see 'em return once and sometimes more than once.




Yeh I know there are exceptions to this and there are kids who go out and do it for themselves but many many don't leave the nest until their middle 20s or later. This is why I reckon kids today seem younger than I was.




If I had my 17 year old body and that tablecloth, I would still happily run wild down the main street of Surfer's Paradise barefoot singing, 'American Pie' cos that was the song of my senior year.