Costume day

I was wearing a new shirt today that I hadn't washed yet. It had the smell of fresh fabric that has been sewed together in a factory. Your sense of smell can trigger old memories and that is what happened to me. My shirt reminded me of costume day when I was in ballet. Each year when I did ballet I was in a recital where I danced anywhere from 1 to 4 dances. This meant I got to have a costume. My teacher Mrs. Monson would show us the costume in a catalog and we would all get measured. A few months later the costumes would arrive. Costume day was the best because we got to drop everything and try our costumes on. Then we would go show the other teacher our dance in our costumes. The smell reminded me of costume day because our costumes were usually all balled up in plastic bags and a lot of them had netting for the tutu. The netting and the nylon costume had a specific smell, probably because they had just come straight from the factory. It was fun to dance around in the pretty sequined costumes and imagine how it would look onstage when we did our real performance. One of the best costumes I had was when I was a lobster for "Alice in Wonderland". I had red spandex pants, a red tuxedo jacket and huge red felt claws. It was amazing. We had to skip around on stage wearing these felt claws. Another of my favorites was my first real tutu. I had a few long tutus before, but it's not the same because they aren't the pretty short skirts you always picture. I was proud when I got my first real short tutu because I was able to be in a pointe dance that year. I felt like a real ballerina. I still have all of my costumes at home in a box. Someday I hope my little girl(s) will have a lot of fun in them.