Apropos my previous post on living one’s dreams, today I began wondering about red lines between fantasy and reality. It’s all well and good to imagine the impossible and go for it when the impossible is the skeleton of a novel hidden in your bottom drawer. But what if your fantasy comes into active contact with the wider world? When does someone else’s fantasy encroach upon my perception of acceptable reality? I believe this may occur when my pleasantly plump, 40+ bank teller decides that she is a lithe 15-year-old and nonchalantly dons a pair of shiny, black leggings, inarguably at least one size too small for her. It was upon viewing them, first thing in the morning, that I recognized an important element in the fantasy vs. reality debate: It is one thing to deviate from your age in spirit. It is quite another thing to deviate from your age in spandex.
My dislike of the eighties clothing comeback notwithstanding, I was surprised by the strength of my reaction to her outfit. After all, I've recently found myself becoming desensitized to the daily viewings of women who religiously uphold the three tenets of Israeli ‘fashion’. (For those not blessed to live in the Holy Land’s trendiest metropolis, these are: 1) Tighter and shorter is always sexier; 2) Anything is attractive on you, regardless of body type, if it happened to have made an appearance in the [stick in your brand of choice] display window; 3) Leave nothing to the imagination, aka cleavage, cleavage, cleavage.) Yet, in this case, I was flung back in time, dismayed at a nostalgic level of 2003 innocence, caught in a hypnotic trance.
It is unclear whether my intensity of feeling was due to my unavoidably lengthy interaction with the woman or merely due to the fact that, frankly, she looked like badly packaged bratwurst with a head. In either case, I was definitely not alone in my morbid fascination. The middle-aged man behind me in line, himself no connoisseur of high fashion judging by the paisley shirt and acid-washed jeans, was equally riveted, unable to tear his eyes away from clearly visible underwear lines jutting out beneath a waistband that had to be cutting off circulation.
It took a great deal of self-control, and the nearly two decades of subliminal politeness training undergone in the Midwest, to make me avert my eyes tactfully and mind my own business. My fantasy was to approach her and say, kindly, quietly: "Ma’am. Please. NO." I, unlike the bank teller, chose reality this morning. Have a nice day.
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