Tugging on the Levi’s Tags

I started a new school in a new city in the 5th grade. It was 1977. My Mom was making almost all of my clothes. For the first day of 5th grade, she made me a “special” outfit, I’ll never forget it. A red high-neck, long-sleeved blouse with little white flowers on it, with a denim blue (but not denim material, that part’s important) matching vest and pants. I cared very little what kind of clothes I was wearing then, and the town we had moved from was the same, kids wore whatever their parents gave them.

Not so much the case in Okemos, Michigan, which I was about to find out. So it’s the first day of school, and I’m standing on the blacktop of the playground with all the other kids, when a woman holding one of those bullhorn things yells out that we are to form lines by grade, indicating with big waves of her arm which grades go there. I fall into formation with the other 5th graders, there’s about five girls in a row right in front of me. I notice that unlike me, they are all wearing actual blue jeans, and short sleeve tops with folded-down collars and what looked like an alligator on the front left, and their jeans all have a little red tag on the back.

And then, in a moment I will never forget, one of the girls called out “let’s tug on each other’s tags for good luck!”. And everyone BUT ME reached out and gave a little tug to the Levi’s tag sticking out from the jeans of the person in front of me. The girl behind me might have snickered, I don’t remember.

I had dorky homemade clothes and an extremely stupid and unflattering “bowl cut” haircut, and I had just moved to a town where even the 5th graders were wearing the latest fashions. Oh, and to make it worse, my Dad had gotten the job offer at the beginning of summer, and by the time we were able to sell our house and buy the new one, it was August, and both of the 5th grade classes had already been filled up. So I had to spend 5th grade in the WORST class possible, the one that was for all of the kids for whom ENGLISH WAS NOT THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE.

I had no friends at all that year. That is not an exaggeration. None. It took me months to convince my Mom that I needed her to buy me clothes from Hudson’s like everyone else had, and to let me grow my hair out from the bowl cut. By 6th grade, when middle school started and I was in classes with kids from three other schools, I was finally able to live down the humiliation of 5th grade. And I did NOT wear homemade clothes to the first day of school.

This humiliating memory of the first day of school has been brought to you by Hanes Kids and the Parent Bloggers Network Blog Blast. Thanks for making me relive that, ladies. lol

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