Shoes, Transit; tights, Old Navy; brown tube-dress, Spoof; sweater, Dynamite; bracelet, Plaid Giraffe; brooch and earrings, vintage.
So, do you remember Transit? The cheaper Canadian shoe alternative to Aldo? It’s now known as Spring? I spent a lot of my hard-earned paper-route money at Transit, and I remember buying my first pair of fashionable boots there, and they were about calf height and army green with a chunky heel. I was quite proud of them and thought I was being pretty daring with my fashion choices in buying them and strutting down the halls of the high school in something that I thought was SO different. But really? A chunky, square-block heel? *Insert peals of wild laughter here.*
My longtime friend, KL, and I, driven by our mothers, used to take day trips to Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario/Michigan to get all the “great” shopping finds on the American side. Along with copious amounts of Mint-a-Burst gum and Jane makeup from Wal-Mart, one of my “coups” was a pair of black, chunky-heeled clogs from Payless. Yes, that’s right. Black. Chunky. Clogs. Sure, clogs are back this season, but not mine. Trust me.
But, back to Transit. I have had the pleasure of owning the shoes in the above pictures for a long time, obviously, since I didn’t buy them at “Spring.” I’d say about, oh, seven years? I remember there was a high-heeled version as well, but because I was in college/university, living at home, and not going out to the bar, or to an office, I reasoned, at the time, there was no need for them. Younger self, what the eff were you thinking?! Years later, I’m still pining away! But, I do think these flats are pretty great, despite showing a bit of wear and tear. I have gotten many compliments on them, and can recall wearing them with friends PP and SG in Toronto when a large, purple, hooped earring I was wearing fell out and rolled and bounced across the street. My chivalrous man-friends came to my rescue and I still have that earring set today. Could that be in a Spring commercial? Girl meets two boys. Girl rips out her own earring because of clumsiness. Boys scramble across traffic to seek out earring and almost die. Girl ignores this, hopeful that earring didn’t fall down gutter (she REALLY likes them!). Boys retrieve girl’s earring. Ladies on girl’s comic-book shoes wink at camera. Aaaaaaaaand, scene.
Speaking of memories, my mom has been e-mailing me diary entries written by my 10-year-old self from an old journal she found at home. They are hilarious! I was obsessed with a boy named Martin, and almost every entry talks about him in some way. A sample:
Today was Jill’s bithday party! Yahoo!! Not!! It was so boring and painful, well, at least for me!! Martin said he couldn’t dance because “PAM” isn’t here! Then he went off and danced with Jill and Dana G. I almost just sat down and cried.
Look at that Martin, crushing my young hopes!
Reading these entries got me thinking, and I dug out another old diary of mine that begins in 1997, the day after my 15th birthday, and continues through to the end of high school and into some college/university. I never thought of myself as boy crazy, but looking back, I really was! Daydreaming about love, romance, and being swept off my feet were recurring themes. I’ll post some excerpts from my teenage diary in my blog when I come across something funny and/or particularly teenager-y, like this:
August 7, 1997
…I can’t seem to fall asleep, so you (dear diary) were my next choice of what to do. I was reading and I was getting tired, so I stopped. Then I was listening to my new Grease soundtrack and I got awake by listening to the music. I think that it would be so much fun to be involved in a Grease production. Maybe Mr. Maskel is going to do that this year in drama. The only thing is that I can’t sing. I’d have to be part of a chorus – maybe Frenchie because she doesn’t sing except for one line alone in Summer Nights. And it’s kind of nasal, so I could do that. In truth, though, I’d like to be Sandy. That would be fun being her, especially at the end when she dresses up in that sexy leather outfit…
Mr. Maskel never did do that production in drama (I see now that I was extremely mistaken about the capabilities of my high school’s drama department) and I therefore never got to sing that one line in a professional capacity, but I am still very confident in my ability to sound nasal (and extremely shrill, if need be), so as long as I have that, my hopes for international superstardom on the Grease stage don’t have to die.
More to come from me, the teenager in the chunky-heeled Transit shoes…
