Better Put on My Play Clothes

I don’t know why but the words “play clothes” popped into my head the other day. Hadn’t thought of that concept in years. Do you remember play clothes? Does anyone know what I am talking about? Was my family the only one who subscribed to the play clothes system? Did we all just stop doing it? Please let me know. The whole thing is a bit bewildering.

Play clothes, as the name suggests, were clothes you played in. Much like we now change into our “comfy clothes” at the end of the work day (well, pre-Covid we did.) When we got home from school we changed into play clothes. Our school clothes were folded and put away safe from the dangers of play. Kind of pointless when I think about it because in my day recess involved some dangerous play outside. We played on metal slides, climbed metal monkey bars and I don’t know what to call this- but we had a horizontal bar about chest height (well for me at least “I’m not short, I’m fun size!”) upon which the girls would clamber up on, one leg in front, one in back. We would bend the front leg at the knee and through some miracle of physics we would spin around and come back to an upright position. As far as I know that was the sole purpose of said bar. Anyway, we did all these crazy things and more on asphalt. No safe landings for us.

We also had to run from the “kissing boy”. Did you have one of these? Terrifying.

I don’t know if he had cooties or not but I sure did not want to find out. And why did he want to kiss so much? I’ll never know. We moved away and thank goodness because either he was getting faster or I was getting slower because not long before we moved he almost got me. He ended up tripping and falling and I am pretty sure he kissed my shoe. I washed it.

So anyway, we changed out of school clothes to keep them from getting ripped and stained I presume but nobody does this any more. I don’t know why. Anyone? Kids clothes are so cute today, shouldn’t they be protected by substituting some hand me downs to play in? Maybe we’ve just realized that the cute stuff gets torn at school anyway. Maybe there is a movement afoot to look your best while playing? No idea. The word just popped into my head as I said and I had previously forgotten all about the concept. So I thought I’d put it out there. Besides, I don’t have anything else to do. I’m all dressed up and thanks to Covid, I’ve got nowhere to go.

If you enjoyed this story you may like, “Remembering Travels with a Toddler”