When you walk into the meeting a hush will fall over the crowd. The only sound in the room will be your high heels stepping toward the microphone, save for a few groans and the occasional pant of someone trying to catch his breath.
At the microphone you’ll read your statement. It will be brilliantly worded, despite the fact that it could just as well be a succession of fart noises for all it will matter. For everyone there with you in that room tonight, your words will only serve as the reason for you to expand your bosom with air and release.
But you’ll speak your heart. You’ll tell them you respect the fact that they think yearbooks are devilish in that they promote pride and vanity, sins in the eyes of God. You’ll tell them how proud you have been of your son for fighting them tooth and nail to get a yearbook for his graduating class, because he didn’t leave his old school district with its top-ranked yearbook committee just to end up in this podunk town and be told he’ll never be able to put a caption underneath a poorly framed photo of a bad haircut again.
“I’m thinking of his transcripts,” you’ll say, making sure to shift your balance and send your left hip jutting out just so. “And I want to put this to a vote right now.”
You promised yourself you’d never again wear the dress. It has too much power. It’s sent too many men to their ruin. It even once forced you to pack your bags in the middle of the night when you spotted a caravan of angry wives coming over the hill, their headlights blazing like firey torches in the hands of an uncontrollable mob. No, the dress is too much and the best thing would be for it to be destroyed.
But is it wrong to wear the dress in an effort to help your son?
“All in favor of allowing yearbooks into our school, raise your hands.”
The council will suddenly look frightened.
“What do you want us to do?” the council president will ask. “We don’t want to make you unhappy. We don’t want to make you leave.”
Tell them, “Raise your hands.”
The entire council will raise their hands.
“Now say that it’s unanimous and that a yearbook committee will be established in the school as of Monday morning.”
The council president will do as you command. You’ll thank them and announce that you have to go. They’ll protest, a few of them crying, but they’ll be silent as they watch you leave.
You’ll leave a note next to your son’s pillow telling him that by the time he wakes up. you’ll be gone, and that he’s going to have to go and live with his aunt across town.
“Make the best yearbook any high school’s ever seen,” write to him. Then get in your car and start driving. When word gets around town about your dress and the power it has, and the lives it took when several of the council members strangled themselves with their own ties not long after you left the council meeting, the town’s wives will come for you.
“Just like every other stronghold of small-town America,” you’ll say to yourself, watching horizon of closed minds recede in your rear view mirror. This time was really the last time. This time you really are going to destroy that dress.
Or you’ll at least pack it away into storage. No reason to throw away a perfectly good dress after all, is there?
Happy Wear The Dress To Tonight’s Town Council Meeting Day!
