Missing the mark

Once when I was about 14, I took a flight somewhere. I can't remember where but it has nothing to do with the story so I'm not going to work too hard to trace all my trips backwards and give a good guess. Since I was 14, an age where you want to be more independent than judgement and parents allow you to be, I had little time alone. I was almost always near my parents or my siblings. The people who will yell across the room that you just think you're funny and people don't normally laugh at your jokes like they are right now. It's not meanness I don't think. It's just hard having the people who know you best nearby when you try and re-invent yourself. The kind of re-inventing you are dying for at age 14. So, this flight. It was a place and time where I was alone and had no prying family eyes watching. And you know how high fashion is full of clothes no one would ever actually be caught dead wearing? But at 14 you might be inclined to think that those people do exist? That they are just outside of your hum drum everyday life and if they can dress like that, so can you. You also know how fashion models sometimes unbutton their shirts or dresses to an impossibly low level? A level that would embarass the rest of us? Well anyway, you get the picture. Here I was on a flight with my checkered button-down unbuttoned as far as my middle class upbringing would allow. I proudly walked down the aisle to use the bathroom when a well-meaning woman tugged on the bottom of my shirt and said, "Honey, your button's unbuttoned". The man next to her piped up in a gravely voice, "Aw, why'd you have to tell her!" A clueless attempt at helping me and the attention of a pervert. Not exactly what I'd been going for.