My Annual Spring Fever Striptease
Image by kodama (home) via Flickr
Spring has finally arrived in the City of Brotherly Love. I know this because I took the #23 bus home today and the southbound route crosses through Temple University’s campus. Temple, being an institution of higher learning (albeit one for which I have very little regard), was replete with bare skinned undergraduates: a girl in a tank top lounging on the grass, a boy in shorts waiting line at the grease trucks, a t-shirted couple strolling hand in hand without the slightest concern for the fact that it was, in fact, only just above freezing and therefore not exactly t-shirt weather.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but smile. I remember when I was in college. It took very little—very little indeed—to get me to strip down to my cropped tights and sundresses. I stuffed my winter coat into the storage tote under my bed as soon as possible, which is probably why I got sick every spring (and probably why the Temple students I saw from the window of the bus will be lined up in the nurse’s office tomorrow morning.)
Being 25, however, I now know better. Which is why I was rather surprised to find myself tearing into my summer clothes as soon as I got home and heading for my afternoon cup of coffee wearing a denim skirt and a simple long sleeved t-shirt. I ordered my first iced beverage of the season (just in case I wasn’t sufficiently susceptible to pneumonia already) and admired my new “spring” look in the mirror behind the counter.
In my haste to shed my winter layers, however, I forgot to throw an extra outfit into my dance bag—an outfit, say, that would have been appropriate for my teaching my usual roster of evening classes.
Despite having spent the past 22.5 years of my life dancing, I hate dancewear. I hate leotards, I especially hate tights and despite that I’m rather fond of my new “active wear” tops, I’d still rather dress like a civilian if given the choice. (This would explain why, during college, I generally changed outfits four or five times a day and lived with a huge mound of not-quite-clean-but-not-quite-ready-for-the-wash clothing piled at the foot of my bed.)
I didn’t have time to go home again before going to work and something told me that my boss wouldn’t be particularly pleased by my showing up to teach in a denim skirt (especially seeing as it’s slit was rather… generous). Halfway across the Walt Whitman Bridge, however, I had a flash of inspiration: I would just have to buy myself a new outfit!
Fifteen minutes (and fifteen dollars later), I had a new “active wear” top and a pair of leggings, courtesy of the junior department’s clearance rack at Kohl’s. I spent the next two hours rearranging my long sleeve t-shirt around my hips to conceal the fact that I’m actually too long-wasted for leggings from the juniors department and cursing myself for having succumbed to yet another bout of spring fever lunacy but still: it was fun while it lasted.
Kat Echevarría Richter 
9 Responses to “My Annual Spring Fever Striptease”
This happened at PSU too when I was going there. It was almost as if the first days of warm weather thawed some sort of shank gene in every girl on campus.
Haha, it’s so true!
It’s slit??? Tut tut!
I hate my clothes for work, they make me feel like a big trashbag and I always need to change out of them if I’m going out. The new spa coat I got is better, but still annoys me and catches me when I massage now. We’re feeling very springish here, but I’m sure it’ll drop down to 10 degrees or so soon!
Aww, I’m sure you don’t look like a trash bag. Maybe you could bedazzle your new spa coat? I once bedazzled a set of scrubs for my college roommate who was working as a vet tech at the time 🙂
For a week they have promised 70 and sunny on Friday, I went to work this AM dressed for 55 and sort of sunny, just in case…. and still froze my a** off. But it is warm and sunny now and I have a case of Spring fever that is off the charts.
You are so fun to read.
I think that temperature, like time, is relative. Time runs faster or slower depending on what we are doing and temperature feels colder or warmer despite the number of degrees depending on factors like wind-chill, the temperature it was yesterday, relative humidity and so forth. I think there is a solar wind-chill factor of time that has a similar effect to wind and cold. However, since everything including timepieces is inside time, the variations in time are impossible to measure.
But these, of course, are just my thoughts, while you, exquisite youngster, so quick to be sage, are just your own.
And so entertaining. 🙂
Ha! I know what you mean. It looked beautiful and sunny here too. I didn’t go for the no coat look since I knew that would bite me big time but I thought I could at least get away without GLOVES. At least it’s sunny. Who knew the biggest fashion statement made today would be the Canada gloves so popular at the Winter Olympics last year?
Pat Amsden
http://www.patamsden.com
In the days of the dinosaurs, when I was in college, we covertly built, what I am sure would now be considered a breach of homeland security, a roaring campfire on campus, in a spot near a little brook. We roasted hot dogs and just thought we were the coolest kids on campus celebrating the first day of spring…at least I think it was the first day, although it was at least the first NICE day after a long winter of sledding on lunch trays, it certainly was the best food we had eaten all year!