Editor’s note: Walt Amses is a educator and writer who lives in North Calais.
The suit arrived in the mid-’90s when our eldest was in middle school and needed “something dressy” for a semi-formal dance in two days, for which – typical of adolescent boys in rut – he had arranged a date and not much else. Although our horror was manifest at the time line, we were subtly gratified that this seemed a departure from his recent immersion in “punk” – including a mohawk of colors not seen in nature – including Central American birds – and visible from the space shuttle.
He’d traded in his lacrosse stick for a needle and thread, using dental floss long into the night to taper Goodwill jeans to within centimeters of allowing passersby to ascertain immediately whether or not he’d ever had the mumps. His physical fitness routine consisted of wearing his clothes – leather vests that weighed 75 pounds (also bought in thrift shops) on which he affixed all manner of metal studs, spelling out a series of anarchist mantras.
However delightful the transition from nose ring to nosegay might be, there was still only 48 hours to not look like awful parents. It was determined that a consignment shop near a ski area would be our best bet, the perception being that one-percenters, able to afford a winter rental, lift ticket and enough gas to get here from Connecticut, would probably recycle their high-end accessories as frequently as we bartered a plastic bag of aluminum cans into a Sierra Club mea culpa.
Another driving force behind our thrift was that the average prom was costing high schoolers obscene amounts of money. We’d heard of teens too young to drive coercing their parents into renting Hummer limos; girls having their lips injected for the evening; and of course, hundreds of dollars for the privilege of wearing someone else’s clothes. And I’m sorry, every misguided boy whoever rented a tuxedo looks either like an adult film actor or Wayne Newton.
The Suit – dark charcoal gray with an almost imperceptible pinstripe — allowed us to transcend all that. When he put it on and stepped out of his room, it appeared as though the Clash’s tour bus had been T-boned by Ralph Lauren’s Bentley. It fit him like it was custom sewn and he didn’t look like he was auditioning for “Guys and Dolls.”
Our sons have inherited a magical genetic code that evidently skipped me. Clothing drapes over them like they’re statues in museum. On me, anything but “loungewear” (new name for sweatpants or pajamas) fits like an inadequate square of Saran Wrap clinging to several pounds of ground beef. Neither of them acquired this specific trait and both survived into young adulthood, svelte as British exclamation points in a lyric poem.
But the suit not only worked on that day, it took on a life of its own that lasted years. Our son was seemingly done with it after several functions and it was back in the closet, when his younger brother pulled a similar stunt. This time we were lying in wait like cheetahs for a gazelle.
The suit attended several middle school dances; proms in two states; and was borrowed several times by the sons of family friends for similar functions. It acquired a shirt with ruffles on the front and French cuffs. Someone added a cummerbund. And there are now a couple of different colored bow ties as part of the ensemble.
With trees leafing, peepers peeping and teenagers doing the age-old mambo of the changing voice, parents are faced with the annual challenge of prom time and all its implications. We got lucky and made a $10 investment that turned out to be a gift that has kept on giving … even to this very day.
As things come full circle, as things do, our older son – a decade and a half removed from middle school — is grudgingly attending a wedding in upstate New York. He’s visiting us from Brooklyn and absently queries: “Is that suit still around?”
Yes, the suit lives, and — as I write this – like a 17-year cicada, it is rolled up amid socks and underwear, in a JetBlue carry-on, headed for NYC, humbly awaiting another opportunity to reemerge and work its springtime magic.
