St. Louis Trip

Going to take a break from my poorly-articulated vaguely political blogging to tell you about the trip I just took. I got back to Fargo from St. Louis yesterday, where I was visiting my sister Becky for her senior fashion show. Becky lives in a pretty off-campus house, which nevertheless reenforced my decision in college not to live off-campus. On Saturday night, after dinner at a delicious vegetarian restaurant downtown, Becky and her housemates took me to a college party, which also reenforced my decision in college not to go to college parties. This party would never have been my scene, but it was worse than it would have been a few years ago, because now I'm old. Let me tell you about this party, and perhaps you will understand. It was an end of the year thing for the Wash U radio station, and the theme was "Plant Parenthood," which was confusing to me, but anyway, everybody was dressed up like a pregnant plant, which is not a look I have any idea of how to pull off, so I just wore a shirt with some flowers on it. I also brought a purse to this party, which was mistake number one. Nothing makes you look more like someone's mom at a college party than carrying a purse around. Mistake number two was when Becky introduced me to some of her friends and I tried to shake their hands. One of the girls refused to shake my hand, telling me, "We don't have to shake hands, we're at a party." Ok. When I told some of the kids there that I was clearly too old for this party, one of them reassured me, "Oh, don't worry, our old manager is here too, and she graduated last year!" Hopefully that gives you some idea.

The rest of the trip was less disorienting. On Sunday morning my parents dropped me off at a coffee shop where I did a few hours of work before the fashion show. After we ate lunch, my parents and I went to Union Station where we arrived a good hour before anyone else, and consequently got the best seats in the house. At three the show started. A lot of things happened during the show that didn't totally make sense to me, but the thing that made the least sense was the emcee, who was introduced to us, but had no discernible connection to either the school or the fashion industry, and who was, moreover, a terrible emcee. It gave the whole event a delightfully awkward feeling. The show started with the sophomores, who had made beach coverups of highly variable quality (but there were at least two that were amazing). Then the juniors presented shirt and pants outfits they had made, two of the three of which were really great. Finally, the seniors presented their thesis collections. Some of them were really good, but Becky's was objectively the best designed and constructed, which the faculty acknowledged when they awarded her Designer of the Year. (Afterward, my dad told me he thought it was a nice gesture that the faculty had not awarded all three awards to Becky.) When the show ended there was a reception during which I did not bad-mouth the other designers too much, and someone asked if they could buy Becky's gown. I had my parents drop me off at their hotel to do more work for a few hours, and then the four of us went out to dinner at another great vegetarian restaurant. We capped the trip off by my mom almost getting us killed on the way to the airport the next morning, but we all made it. I'm so happy I got to see Becky's work for myself. I take a lot of pride in the work that I do, but it's amazing to see the work Becky has been doing, which is so beautiful, so well executed, and which has both artistic and utilitarian value. I couldn't be more proud of her.