Spirit Week: PJ Day

The spirit is definitely moving me this week. Today took some effort. Sure, PJ Day sounds convenient: Just roll out of bed and trudge into school in whatever you sleep in. Yeah, not so much when one typically sleeps in old (non-blog-worthy) t-shirts and lives a forty minute commute away from school. And even if one were to own a proper set of pajamas, wearing them on the bus with "outdoor" shoes (in my case, my trusty Blundstone boots) and a bigger-than-usual overcoat to disguise the fact your bottoms are leopard print cotton sweats makes for a rather self-conscious and uncomfortable trip - rather like, I figure, a flasher's first deliberate escapade.

My PJ bottoms actually are leopard-print cotton sweatpants (and my go-to slippers are zebra striped so I'm killing all sorts of fashion etiquette today) so, this morning, I changed out of my PJs, packed them in a bag with my housecoat and slippers, brought them to school and changed once I got here.

Check that: I wore the t-shirt top (pictured above) rather than changing altogether. But I wore a coat over it. And I drove. Like I said, effort.

As I mentioned yesterday, PJ Day is usually the most popular day of Spirit Week at this school. That being said, only about 1 in 5 students observes/participates/remembers it. I was considering it yesterday in preparation for today and wondering why I don't remember it being a thing at all in my high school years. I came up with a couple of explanations.

1) Context is important. Wearing your PJs to school in the BC Lower Mainland fall, winter, or spring is a very different thing than in Saskatchewan where the school year is best outlined as September, SNOW, or June. I remember the last day of Grade 8, also the last day of elementary school when one classmate, who lived across the street from the school set himself a goal to be back in bed at home after signing yearbooks and picking up his report card before the sheets had a chance to cool down. He still got dressed to come to school. And that was June.

2) The acceptability of PIP (PJs In Public) has grown. I blame this in part on Lululemon(TM) and the yoga gear fad. I'd have to consult with the fashion-minded frugalista Annabelle Hepburn to be certain but I'm pretty sure by 1990, leggings and the like had been deemed beyond passé (see? I can be French-esque too) but then lululemon athletica was founded in 1998 and by 2000, it was fashionable to wear unflattering, high-priced, patterned stretchy skin in place of trousers. And those who couldn't afford $60 - $100 for a pair of stripped-down stir-up pants could be forgiven for interpreting the sudden prevalence of über-casual dress on public transit and at the workplace as a tacit societal acceptance of a comfort-first approach to clothing.

3) Loss of privacy. This goes back to discourses on social media, common sense, the diminishing of the term "friend" and crowd-sourcing. When I was in high school, you held sleepovers with maybe a half-dozen of your close friends. They were the ones who got to meet your parents, annoy your siblings, chase your pets, hang out in your room/closet/basement (whatever), and watch movies/talk/crimp hair late into the night.  It was a fairly exclusive experience that could be shared second-hand at school the next week in discussions. It allowed for safe risk-taking, potential embarrassment that was understandably manageable because of the small number of witnesses. Nowadays, if sleep-overs do still happen, they are streamed, tweeted, shared, and updated so persistently, nothing is sacred or safe anymore. And, similar to the word "friend", "privacy" in this arena has become so de-valued that the approach has become extreme - either you share everything or you share nothing at all. ever. Neither is really healthy emotional development and both can be potentially problematic socially. 

To end where I started, PJs are a source of comfort in theory. I have my winter PJs - red fleece reindeer printed ones and seafoam green fuzzies that I refer to as my Muppet-skins - and a couple of sets of cotton coordinates that appeal to my humour (see today's) and my own personality (see today's). PJs may, in fact, in their natural state (ie. not-Spirit-Week requirement), be a source of truth for how we see ourselves. I believe we sleep best when we are at ease and there is some evidence that we learn best when at ease too. However, the jury's still out on how well teens learn while asleep.

The Power of Place

Today's shirt isn't exactly exciting or eye-catching but the memories of my visits to Oxford always thrill me a little. The thought of walking the same lanes and seeing the same vistas as Tolkein, Shelley, Wilde, and Adam Smith boggles... and I mean BOGGLES... my mind.

Geography is so much more than co-ordinates on a globe. In the movie Collateral, Jamie Foxx's character has a photograph of the Maldives tucked into the sun visor in the taxi he drives. When things get rough, he takes a little holiday by looking at that picture and thinking about that beach. That power of place depends on the depth of feeling associated with the memory or the dream. We never recapture a specific moment but we do try, don't we? And being in a place that has deep meaning for us can invoke the memory of that moment so that we can choose to relive it, reflect on it, even re-evaluate it through our more experienced lens. Returning year after to year to the same restaurant to celebrate an anniversary. Spending Christmas morning with family in the same living room every year. Stopping at the same viewing point every time a road trip passes by it. It's where nostalgia and deja vu have a love child and produce the essence of a place. Those little snapshot moments in our minds' eye give us solace and respite, maybe even resolve and motivation.

And then there are places where we've never physically been to that still resonate with us. For me, that was most keenly felt in Florence, Italy. The first day I woke up in that city and stepped out of our crazy amazing fabulously-priced hotel and onto the via that runs along the banks of the Arno, I felt as though I had returned to a well-known and long-loved place. I traced this feeling back (past my multiple screenings of A Room With a View) to my undergrad degree spent buried in multiple courses on medieval history. Dante, Boccaccio, the Medici family... I studied their writings, their art, their politics. I lived, breathed, and dreamed their legacies for four years. It shouldn't have surprised me that their stomping grounds would seem familiar. But it did. And that's the power of place. 

Anyone have an example to share?

**Now that I'm thinking about Florence, I gotta share images from the hotel.

Those paintings are the DOORS to the rooms

That's the front lobby and the check-in counter

And THAT's a typical room. Not even kidding. The ceiling had LED "stars" and you could signal "Do Not Disturb" by pushing a button on the bedside console.