The living dead

This fashion tale begins with death.

The living dead, to be exact.

I was week four into recovery from an abdominal surgery, and had only recently began walking again. (Read: Hobbling like a rickety swamp creature.) That afternoon, Women’s Magazine stylist Angel Garcia asked me if I had time to pose of a fashion photo shoot for her portfolio.

Obviously I had time. My entire month’s social activities centered around Brian “Bulldog” Moore and Frank Azar. And I had already determined I didn’t want to consolidate my debt into one easy payment, become an automotive repair technician or partake in a class-action lawsuit for the drug Rybotrichomatomatein.

But fashion? Judge Judy would object. In addition to my hunchback posture, I had been wearing the same sweats for so long they were beginning to grow into my flesh. Probably.

“Perfect,” Angel said. “That’s why I asked you. It’s a zombie shoot.”

Um, thanks?

With no legitimate way out, I traded daytime TV for a black tutu and (for once) nodded approvingly at my tangled bedhead and the circles under my eyes that rivaled an entire baggage cart. I could not do much, but I could do zombie.

When my boyfriend walked in that night — expecting his little injured fawn curled around a heating pad — he instead found me with more stitches than before, hunched over the table with bloody hands and a fake heart dangling out of my mouth. Without a word, he slowly backed out the door. I found him a while later, locked in his car rocking back and forth humming nursery rhymes.

I had gone too far. Again. It was time to head into the light.

In fashion (and life), we must constantly re-invent ourselves. Sometimes, the change is sparked by boredom, or nature (i.e. the “angel wings” I am growing where I used to have triceps) or, as in this case, the need for balance. And a scared boyfriend.

The depth of my fashion rut became clear when I realized most of my closet qualified as a zombie costume. Perhaps it was a way to free myself of Westwood College’s exquisite commercials, but I became obsessed with finding the perfect white dress.

Not for marriage. For balancing out my dark side.

Enter: The innocent age.

I have long criticized the white wedding tradition, believing white is a universally unflattering color, not to mention almost universally deceitful. I have a vase of near-black roses in my living room. (Yes, next to the fake heart with a stake through it.)

That’s why I had to seek help from the yang to my yin: My best friend, Brittany. Platinum blonde Brittany who has more white, eyelet and cotton in her closet than a Holister store.
I did a little research first and found out that hip trench coats, oversized necklaces and military jackets actually come in colors other than black. Who knew? And according to Glamour magazine, the little black dress has been replaced by a little-black-on-white-graphic-print dress.
Then Brittany arrived — wearing a black and purple tutu, black leggings, a black tank top, black vest and purple pumps. She looked like Coraline. Or me.

I grabbed up the first white satin dress I saw at Macy’s. It might have been a knee-length wedding gown. I don’t know. Or care. I just needed to reset the balance of the universe.

Plus, adding some light to my life sounded like an appropriate way to begin re-inventing myself. I put on the white dress.

It looked great with my black boots, black pearl necklace, black sash and long black jacket.
I left the fake heart at home.

Photo by Molly Plann.

Socks and the city

A letter to the lady in line behind me at Target:

You deserve an explanation for what happened last Saturday. It was yet another in a long list of damaging blows from socks to me.

First, the history. I have a hate-hate relationship with socks. This war was first waged during a kickboxing class in college. Front and center, I was kicking boxes like a trillion dollar baby. Bam. Uppercut, jab, jab, jump kick — and whoosh! Out of the leg of my sweatpants, with one particularly swift kick, I launched a sock rocket.

The sock wad — which had apparently smuggled itself inside my pants leg in the washing machine — landed with an audible “Wee!” in the middle of the studio. The other participants saw it and did not know how to respond. They subconsciously backed away, while not missing a kickbox beat, forming a sort of circle around the sock. It looked like a foot fetish tribal dance, or maybe like my sock was about to perform a breakdancing routine.

That was the end of my kickboxing passion.

So needless to say, what happened Saturday awoke in me Post Traumatic Socks Syndrome.

Now, the context:

1. It was my friend Vanessa’s birthday. She wanted to play trampoline dodgeball. But I was wearing a short leather skirt.

2. I ran to Target and bought a pair of sweats to change into. But by the time I returned, everyone had already jumped so much they were hyperventilating and now eating cupcakes. We’re getting old.

3. I never actually used the pants, although I did wear them for three minutes to eat a cupcake. I did not think that qualified as use, which brought me to the customer service line to return the pants.

Now, to address your unspoken (but obvious) concerns:

1. No, I do not live in a van down by the river. I had Old McDonald’s Swine Flu Farm living in my sinuses. Yes, I should have at least combed my hair.

2. My dog, which also happens to have the hairiest white rumpus of any creature on Earth, was in the backseat of my car. Even though the pants were caked in dog hair, once again, I swear they were within the bounds of an appropriate return.

3. When I shook the pants to remove their fur coat, I did not know a dirty sock had been hiding in the pants leg.

4. And no, I am definitely not Aimee Heckel, who writes a fashion column for the Camera. That was actually my sister Leah returning the pants for me.

Thanks for your understanding.


Dear Leah,
I’m sorry. Don’t go to Target for a very long time.
Love,
Aimee

Ah, yes. Socks suck. One of the reasons I love spring is it means I don’t have to touch those things for a good three months.

Of all of my clothing items, socks cause me the most stress. They’re either where I don’t want them to be — i.e. the return line at Target — or nowhere to be found, kidnapped by sock gnomes and my poodles. I feel like I am constantly digging through my bucket of widowed socks for “the other” sock. In vain.

I recently reached such a critical mass of single socks that I began unapologetically wearing mismatched socks to the gym.

My friend Laura says my problem is that my socks are bored, so they’re running away. They’re all white or black.

Laura wears striped socks, toe socks, thigh-high socks, argyle and tie-dyed and homemade and theme socks for every occasion. Her “spring gym socks” are covered in bugs and turtles.
Laura’s socks live in a 30-gallon trashcan that she could hide a body in. More than 350 pairs of socks — 22 of which have monkeys on them. Laura doesn’t own a single plain pair, except for bright green thigh-highs. And she says she has never misplaced a sock.

“If you have fun socks, you can find their mate in the laundry really fast,” she says. “The lost sock is a white sock phenomenon.”

I don’t doubt her. She’s had a feeting frenzy ever since I met her at age 10. Some women spice up their outfits with wild shoes. But Laura is a self-proclaimed “lounger.” Lounging around the house drinking rum doesn’t lend itself to shoes.

“I can’t not buy socks,” she says. “I go to Target for shampoo and I end up with shampoo and socks. I go to PetSmart for food for the lizard and end up with socks.”

(Of course PetSmart has animal-themed socks, she says.)

Laura’s socks have sentimental value. She doesn’t like to get rid of old socks, so she learned how to fix holes. If she has trouble sleeping, all she has to do is slip into a pair of socks and she immediately nods off.

“I sometimes sleep totally nude but in socks,” she says matter-of-factly.

Which brings us to the question: Can socks be sexy? Laura insists they can. Striped socks are fashionable in a punk way. Argyle socks are hot on both men and women. Plus, if you need to shave or have gnarly feet, Laura adds, they “hide the gnarl.”

Image from Flickr user lux2night.

Rat’s nests, bad dye jobs and other hair tragedies

I heard on the radio this morning that the average woman spends 40 minutes every day doing her hair. Over a lifetime, that’s two years of combing, blow drying, gelling, curling and ratting — usually with the goal to look effortless.

I’d like to think I am helping lower that number. For the first 10 years of my life, I refused to
comb my hair.

I was born trapped under a heavy mountain of what feels like horsehair. A mutation of self-growing wire. And my thick mane wasn’t satisfied with just boiling my scalp to 159 degrees on a hot summer day. It is coarse and curly, so it also tangles easily.

I wasn’t the only person who hated wrestling my head mutant. After eight years of violent combing (thereby removing all sensory capability from my follicles), my mom — who has whisper-thin, straight locks — resigned. She threatened: I didn’t start combing my own hair at least once a week, she would just cut the “rat’s nests” out.

I spent several years of my childhood with an upside-down mullet: short on the underside, long on the top. This was a good five years before it became cool for girls to shave the underside of their hair, cut zigzags into the sides and pull it into a ponytail. Ironically, my mom wouldn’t let me do that.

My mom and I (God bless her on Mother’s Day) have always had a rocky hair relationship. She is a natural brunette who dyes her hair blonde. I’m a natural blonde who dyes my hair brunette. She hates that. Yet she is the person who got me hooked on hair dye — at the tender age of 9.
We constantly lament how expensive it is to keep up our hairy addictions, yet neither of us could imagine being our natural color. Gross. Shudder, shudder.

The economy (oh, the “e” word) doesn’t help. In fact, area hair salons report that beauty is one of the areas taking a big hit, as increasingly more people make cuts (zing!) to race away from the red.

Specifically, more people are opting for store-bought color, which promises you’ll get the same results as if you went to the salon.

But be careful, says Robert DiTacchio, creative director of Jon Ric International Salon and Day Spa in Denver (http://www.jonricdenver.com/). More often than not, he says, people end up spending eight times what they would have if they’d just asked the pros. Eight. Times.
Boxed color costs between $15 and $30. Color correction services to fix your hair after it turns out leopard-spotty begin at $150. Salons across the area have reported a “drastic increase” in these color mess-ups — nearly double during the past year.

Unfortunately, this is a number I am contributing to. In March, I had to seek professional intervention from Fringe Hair Studio in Louisville to abolish a fire-truck red spot that I ignited near my bangs. It took three layers of bleach to conquer.

If only I had consulted someone like DiTacchio beforehand. He recommends calling in the pros when you are dealing with resisting gray, vibrant colors (perhaps fire-truck red?) and blonde. Blonde can turn green or orange. Reds can morph into dull pink.

If you do color at home and you’re not striving for a jungle pattern, get a friend to do it for you, DiTacchio says. It’s hard to see what you’re doing on your own head. The best at-home brand is L’Oreal Professional.

DiTacchio also recommends:
Even if your hair is not as thick and coarse as a cattle rope, hydrate it. Look for products with a low pH balance to seal your cuticles.

Wash color-treated hair in cold water to help close the cuticle and sustain the color longer. I have been doing this for several years, and it is completely miserable, but it works. To counteract the hair icicles, I put my towel in the dryer while I’m showering so it’s nice and toasty when I get out.

Wash your hair less to maintain the natural oils.

Use moisture-rich products, such as Aquage, Pureology and Kenra. If you can only afford drugstore brands, once again opt for L’Oreal.

And finally: Brush your hair — a lot. This is one of the best natural conditioners. Brushing your hair brings the oils from your scalp into the ends.

“I tell all of my clients to brush their hair while they’re watching TV,” DiTacchio says. “The old myth of brushing your hair 100 times before bed is true.”

Hmm.

DiTacchio, my mom totally told you to say that, didn’t she?

From bees to bunnies

I was not 10 steps into the Broomfield 24 Hour Fitness when I pivoted and walked back out. I didn’t even make it to the locker room.

There was no way I was sweating here, in sweatpants and an old tank top. This was not a gym. This was a nightclub.

As if the booming hip-hop music wasn’t enough (was that a fog machine in the corner?), the girls seemed to be wearing the same outfits that they would wear to the club, except with clean, pink sneakers instead of stilettos. Well, wait. I think a few ladies going 1.2 mph on the elliptical might have been wearing wedges.

This fitness center was a-swarm with “gym bees.”

The gym bee species, a direct descendant of the barfly, joins a gym as an extension of her Match.com profile, and always announces it on her Facebook status update: “Going to go work out! Xoxo!”Because the gym bee places her iPhone on her treadmill while she stands there reading Cosmo and not exerting whatsoever, she can update her status in live time: “Headed to the weights! Xoxo!”

This is especially useful if a male gym bee across the room has his iPhone perched near the mirror, because, well, what if amid posing and flexing, he lost track of the hottie on the treadmill?

Problem solved. Xoxo!

As a fashion columnist, I’m the first to give a thumb’s up to pride and cleanliness. I like designer clothes and hoop earrings and fishnets and fur. Just not on the bench press.

The she-bee spends more time picking out her perfectly coordinated brand-name top, bottoms and matching shoes than she does getting her heart rate up. And the he-bee sports (if you can even use that verb in this context) hair gel, one or more necklaces and an Affliction shirt on top of an Ed Hardy shirt on top of an Affliction shirt on top of an Ed Hardy tattoo covering up an Affliction tattoo. And jeans.

What happened to Colorado’s true athletes? And how do these posers (literally) stay so fit, when we all see them not working out? Do they chase their evening lines of coke with 1,000 push-ups?

In search of these secrets — as well as a little sports cred — I consulted Boulder’s Kevin Wendling.

Wendling, 30, a Fairview High and University of Colorado grad, is an expert on sports attire for two reasons. First, he is a freelance producer for TV sportscasts, from football to golf to speed skating to car racing. In his words: “I see Spandex being worn to its perfection, in all levels of sport.”

Second, he was the dude who wore the oversized bunny head, tights and a fannypack to the Bolder Boulder this week.

I know, mega cred. The only catch: On this particular day, both Wendling and I had lost our voices — completely. So we conducted the interview via modern day note-passing: Facebook instant messaging. Note: Neither of us was on a treadmill.

Here’s how it went down:

Kevin: (Obligatory small talk) How are things at the Cam today? Are you writing about our voices eloping?

Aimee: Yes. And I wanted to write about workout clothes: dressing designer d-bag to go to the gym.

K: Maybe I should change then? How did you know what I was wearing?

A: No, you’re wearing a bunny head, right?

K: I work out in any number of costumes. Or mustaches.

A: That is why I love the Bolder Boulder. People loosen up and have fun with exercise; they don’t try to make a fashion point. So what is the story of the bunny head?

K: I wish there was a tale. I think I just go for the funniest outfits possible.

A: Have you dressed up every year?

K: Second year. But I dress up a lot for events, as often as possible. Last year I was a gladiator.

A: Where did you get the bunny head?

K: The Ritz. I rented that bad boy. A bunny was the most outstanding costume there. The rest of the outfit was American Apparel: fanny pack, leg warmers, spandex, wristbands, gloves.

A: Outstanding indeed. Was it also hot?

K: Ummm.

A: Not hott with two t’s. Like temperature-wise.

K: I don’t remember, really. I was fed a lot of cocktails during the six miles. I would say we stopped 100 times for pictures.

A: Did you train for the race?

K: To walk? No. And maybe that is why my ankle is mysteriously sprained and my big toes are black and blue.

A: Did you find that sweatbands improved your fitness capacity?

K: Absolutely, except it added to my wind resistence.

A: OK, so tell me: Why the tie? And what did you store in your fannypack?

K: Matched the leg warmers. The fannypack was full of adult beverages.

A: My friend Brittany recently met a guy at a club who was wearing a fannypack, and she asked him “What’s in the pack?” And he said, “Fruit Roll-Ups.” Apparently his friends were like, “Dude, stop wearing your fannypack to da clubs, you’re ruining our game,” but then he was the only one of them picking up girls. So then it was like, “Who’s cool now, haters?”

K: That. Is. Awesome.

A: So back to business. Do you work out?

K: Ew, that was nasty. Sounds like a cheesy pick-up line.

A: Except I am looking at a picture of a dude wearing a bunny head, so my emotions are very complex.

K: I do work out, but not like a meathead.

A: What do you wear to work out in?

K: You’d think I’d wear Spandex, but I don’t. I would love me to be in Spandex 24/7.

A: Do you like it when guys flex in the mirror excessively?

K: I don’t like it, unless it’s me. Which it usually is. Thats 60 percent of my workout, I’d say.

A: What do the pros wear to work out? Mandex? Do they wear necklaces and hair gel?

K: Some do, certainly. Big earrings on some.

A: Is that how they get so strong? By hooking weights into their lobes?

K: Lol.

A: You lolled. How did “lol” even become a word? What’s wrong with the good old-fashioned “Heh?”

K: I might start a clothing company called Lol.

A: An athletic clothing company, that makes clothes that double up for working out and working it — on the dance floor. Your insignia: a massive bunny head. Do it.

K: Just do it.

A: I have a feeling this is how movements are made.

Prom at 30?

I did not go to prom for my 30th birthday.

By luck, or probably fate, my May birthday coincides with the biggest dress-up day of the year for high schoolers.

So logically — and partially out of protest for no such similar day for “adults” — I have made a tradition of sneaking into various proms and crashing them. Crashing, in this sense, means dancing (I know, who dances at prom?) and not standing around acting self-conscious. I’ve always been a rebel.
We would arrive late and simply walk in, wearing oversized sunglasses and way too much lipstick. Miraculously, we never got caught, kicked out or arrested. Even after the smile lines around my eyes deepened. Even after I unapologetically announced my plans, year after year, in the newspaper. I’d like to think it’s because I’m so youthful and spry. But more likely, no one spoke up because they were scared.

That’s what kept me home this year. It’s totally normal to sneak into prom at age 29. But age 30? Ew. That’s. Just. Creepy.

Well, the beer kept me at home, too. (Like one and a half beers; I left my liver in San Francisco.) Which was just as well, because the real party occurred in my closet. According to the photos and not my memory whatsoever, my friends and I changed outfits every three to five minutes.

Then we brought prom home.

It was so melancholy. I pulled out my old prom dresses — all 14 of them, including the four from my uncrashed proms — and dressed my friends in them. Some fit. Some ripped. Some looked more like bathing suits.

Then, we brought the boom box to the busy street outside my house and did a fashion show. It was like everything not to wear all wrapped up on one stage — er, sidewalk. The worst fashion trends, from 1995 to 2008: poufy shoulders, heart-shaped necklines, itchy sequin straps, multi-colored velvet, lace cut-outs. The mistakes seemed to recycle every few years, blurring the decades, illuminating the hilarity of society and most certainly terrifying my neighbors.

Then, the fashion show turned into an impromptu parade. Which, by luck or probably fate, led us to the karaoke bar down the street. Which is where I saw Them.

It was heavenly: formal gowns, PBR, an open microphone, a carnival-style popcorn machine on wheels, more formal gowns — what? More gowns? The entire room was buzzing with women wearing prom dresses. Women, not girls. Old crazy ladies. Just like me.

And, unlike prom, they were dancing. On tables.

It was a bachelorette party, and for the first time probably ever, my friends and I fit right in. A birthday reminder that if you stay true to your own quirkiness, and you don’t chase the past, and you’re willing to keep marching forward (even if it is a ridiculous dress-up parade), you will eventually end up exactly where you’re meant to be.

Which brings us to my e-mail this morning.

Thin Man Tavern, 2015 E. 17th Ave. in Denver. May 30, starting at 9 p.m. Prom Night 2: The Totally Awesome Sequel, featuring prom photos and drink specials for grown ups.

I’ll be there. Arriving late, wearing oversized sunnies. Ready to crash.

When hippie meets hipster

OK, Boulder. You win. I give up. You can stop beating me over the head with your peace signs.
I’ve been holding my breath for six years. The Anti-Hippie, I called myself. But a girl can only plug her nose so long before her mouth opens to gulp big wafts of Woodstock perfume (I use the term lightly).

And I’ll be darned to heck if it doesn’t smell delicious. In fact, it doesn’t even stink. At all.
This confession could cost me my job as a fashion columnist, but that’s a sacrifice for the greater good of spreading the word about the New Hippie Revolution, a movement I have started with myself. Down with the wo-man.Mainly, Sarah Jessica Parker. I don’t want to write about SJ’s latest trainwreck of a “Sex” sequel, or the $10 million put into her wardrobe. Know why?

Because I don’t have $10 million. And neither do you. Probably. (You never know around here.)
I’m annoyed by Carrie Bradshaw’s “artsy” style. Her poseur-bohemian accessories cost more than a Real columnist — the kind who owns the poetic license to gratuitously capitalize Things for emphasis — earns in a lifetime. Artists don’t have money. That’s why they have to be creative with their style. And you can’t buy creativity.

Here’s where the New Hippie Revolution comes in. The NHR is the inevitable response to the recession, for folks who are sick of the constant wrestling match with the economy, technology and (for some of us) body hair.

I’m not sure how Boulder unleashed its final winning blow in the cage fight versus my Schick Quattro. Maybe it was my near-death childbirth extravaganza three months ago. (My birth plan was the Murphy’s Law Method.) Or the hilarious stack of medical bills that forced me to sell my car and ride the bus. Or maybe it was simply the undiluted idiocy in SJ’s last romantic comedy with Hugh Grant.

Regardless, my husband is looking at a 1973 VW bus as I write.

Still, being a revolution newbie, I’m almost as big of a poseur as SJ, minus the whole money thing. That’s why I solicited help from the greatest guru since the Grateful Dead:

My aunt Cindy was/is a real hippie. Today, she makes jewelry and is an international expert on beads. In 1973, she sewed clothes out of pieces of vintage clothing in the back of her husband’s silversmith shop in the mountains not far from Boulder.

Cindy says: Hippies are not dirty.

Some older, conservative people in the ’70s categorized everyone with long hair as hippies, and that included some unkempt bags of dirt (my words, not hers), as well as Rastas with dreadlocks, neither of which were necessarily part of The Movement. Cindy said she never knew a “dirty hippie.”

Even mountain folk without running water bathed in the creek (with biodegradable soap) or at the hot springs’ showers. Other friends showered at the silver shop; they dropped quarters into a coffee can to help pay utilities.“Today a lot has changed from what it was like in the real true hippie years,” she says. “My values were well grounded and I believe in it: an earthy, simple, pure, peaceful, usually very intelligent and very resourceful, talented culture.”

This means I can keep my bare armpits. Very groovy.

Cindy also says: Make everything from scratch. This proves problematic for this one girl, a friend of a friend — definitely not me — who broke her sewing machine while trying to make a Smokey the Bear costume after six too many glasses of wine.

That’s why the New Hippie Revolution touts buying clothes that other people made from scratch.

Like Phat Cat Patch (www.phatcatpatch.com or www.phatcatpatch.etsy.com), a line of gorgeous, handmade patchwork dresses by a Boulder single mom named Lauren Vice. I love the floor-length purple and dragon-print dress, with five layers of fabric ruffles. She calls her clothes “wearable art,” and they start as low as $20. Not $10 million.

Oh, dad. Could there be something to dad’s funny quirks?

By Aimee Heckel, Vanessa Miller, Brittany Anas

AIMEE: I’ll be gone for Father’s Day this year. Not that we call it Father’s Day in my house. I’ve never called my dad “father” or even “dad.”

To outsiders, it is weird that I call my dad “Frog.”

My family has tried to trace the nickname back, sifting through ancient hieroglyphics (the comic strips he drew during boring piano recitals).

We’ve conducted linguistic dissections (Frog rhymes with smog, and he went to college in Chicago – nope, that`s not it).

We’ve also pondered literary techniques, such as the onomatopoeia. (He has big eyes. Could I have thought he looked like a frog when I was a child?)

But when it comes down to it, I don’t know why my dad is Frog. No one does. It just is and always has been.

And that very inexplicable silliness, oddness and uniqueness makes the name that utterly fitting.
Dads, Frog-like or not, are funny creatures. Especially to their daughters.

VANESSA: And dads are always right. Of course they know who won the game. They just can’t remember the exact score; “Remind me again. Oh right, right.” Or, “This Merlot is excellent. …What’s that? No, I mean if it were a Merlot it would be superb. As a Pinot Noir, it’s so-so.”

BRITTANY: Dads are also experts at everything.

I decided 9 p.m. the night before high-school volleyball tryouts one year that I wanted to be on the team. I barely knew the difference between volleyball and pingpong.

Neither did my dad. Yet I was convinced he was once a professional volleyball player. He confidently set up a spotlight in our back yard and taught me how to bump, serve, block and whatever else they do on volleyball courts.

The next day, my techniques were far different from those of the other girls. I may have even tried to head-butt the ball like they do in soccer and hurl it like a dodgeball. Somehow I made the team.

But it was that day I learned you can convince people to give you a chance if you glow with confidence.

AIMEE: My dad’s signature quirk was his white Illinois sweatshirt, which in and of itself was not problematic. Except the whole “white” thing. Because Frog wasn’t a big fan of the “washing machine.” He was, however, a big fan of wearing that sweatshirt every day when he got home from work for, oh, three years.

After a while, it was a rainbow – no, that sounds too pretty, more like a cesspool – of ink, barbecue sauce, car grease, soil, grass stains and mysterious other forms of man grime.

One night, I stole the shirt from him to wash it. But he intercepted. Another time, I hid it from him. When he recovered it, he paid me back by chuckling as he scribbled across the front of it with a fat black marker.

Frog now only gets dark-colored shirts for Christmas.

And despite, or maybe because of, this tragic experience, I`m now obsessed with clothes so much that I make a living writing a fashion column.

BRITTANY: My dad’s laundering skills are actually amazing. He taught me how to iron, and he’s one of those people who neatly sets out his clothes the night before he wears them.

I think it comes with driving a mini-van. My dad swapped his manly Blazer for a stereotypical mom-mobile when I entered middle school.

As a sixth-grade girl, my clique of friends became like a secret society. We tied up our parents’ phone lines to update one another about every second of our days, which was also chronicled in the dozens of notes we folded like origami and delivered through the slots of lockers.

Never did my dad eavesdrop on our conversations or read the notes that I accidentally let slip into the laundry.

He didn’t need to. He had his van.

Dad shuttled me and my group of gabby girlfriends to and from every basketball practice and game.

Have you ever heard a van full of middle school girls quiet? There we spilled all of our juicy secrets that were too good to write in notes and we revealed our crushes, which changed faster than the Baskin Robbins flavor of the day.

And at the front of the van, my dad was our deejay playing MC Hammer and Paula Abdul cassette tapes at a negotiable volume, loud enough that my friends thought he was cool but soft enough that he could hear if the secret society of sixth-grade girls needed any fatherly advice.

VANESSA: The great thing about my dad is there’s pretty much no disguising his errors. Which is why we laugh a lot. “We, ” meaning my mom and I.

Take our weekend trip to the mountains. Heading up to the hills bright and early one winter day, we decided to swing past McDonald`s for some delicious McMuffins or whatever.

Dad pulls up to the ordering box thing and is like, “Hi. We want three McMuffins, a coffee and two Diet Cokes. Hello? Hello? Excuse me. Is anyone there? What’s the matter with you people? It`s your job to take orders, idiots.”

I was lying in the back and decided it was time to step in and calm the old man down. But as I looked out the window at the object of my dad’s ire, I noticed something peculiar. Right. It was a trash can. He had stopped one tan box too early and was cursing out the paper cups and straws that had been innocently discarded.

When we got to the right speaker, my dad tried make himself look less erroneous by continuing his rant with the woman. But she was sweet as could be, and gave us the egg sandwiches pronto.
Escapades like that are almost daily for the dude in the socks and sandals who adds, “things of that nature” to the end of every sentence. “What’s for dinner? What time are we eating? Things of that nature.”

But that’s why he’s perfect. For me. I love to laugh.

AIMEE: Indeed, dads are funny creatures. But intentionally or not, it’s their quirks – the nasty sweatshirt, the McTrashcan, the mini-van – that made all the difference. Those are the experiences that shaped us into who we are today.