The Joy of Side Pony Tails
When times get hard—which right now is always—maybe do something absurd and fun for no reason.
Today I got to stand at the window and watch my two kids march to school in high side-ponytails and the wildest pink-and-black-and-blue synthetic leggings known to the state of New Jersey (and that’s saying something.)
It’s Eighties Day at their elementary school—a fact we only remembered as we awoke face-down in flannel sheets this morning with not-quite-enough time to get out the door. Could we pull off two bona fide 80s outfits in under 30 minutes, with nothing but attire from the new 20s? Could we do so with pandemical brains? Odds were unclear.
It turns out, we could! And we did! A black knit dress with fuchsia stripes and sequins? Eighties! A hair clip with rainbow streamers longer than one’s hair? Eighties! My husband played robotic synthetic tunes from the stellar year of ‘83. I poured milk in bowls over Cheerios and explained that robots were very eighties.
Is this eighties? asked the 8-year-old, holding up another hair clip, one adorned with a felt pastel ice cream cone.
So eighties, I reported. The eighties loved accessories.
I like eighties style, she said, and added the clip to her high side-pony.
Because we’re usually a little late and a lot tired, the morning routine is sometimes an oil-and-water mix of sluggish and frantic. Peanut butter is smeared on bread hastily enough to rip it. But then precious minutes are spent idly standing on cold kitchen tile, wondering what to do next, and then remembering: the jelly!
This morning, Eighties Day brought life into celebratory focus. Eighties Day became a rallying cry. The 10-year-old once-nonverbal kid shouted, EIGHTIES DAY!
Why is it Eighties Day, you ask? Well, officially because it’s the 80th day of school this year—a feat in itself. (Our kids went to school! For 80 days! In a pandemic!)
Unofficially, I’d say it’s Eighties Day “because why not!” And also, “for no reason at all!” And because, “If you’re learning in a pandemic, don’t you need to see your masked but friendly teacher with a crimped side-pony, too?” Yes! Yes, you do!
And mostly, because doing absurd-fun things for no reason at all is sometimes the medicine we didn’t know we needed.
Kate Bowler taught me this. Do you know of Kate? She’s a bestselling writer and truth-teller and cultural-narratives-examiner, and she’s the best thing on The Instagram. (Although the 8-year-old would argue that the ‘Gram Gold goes to a Pomeranian named JiffPom.) Kate’s also living with incurable cancer, and writing about what it means to be truly human, especially in a culture that wants to ignore the un-shiny half of all human emotions. I love her.
This fall, Kate photographed herself in a black and white wig and announced that she’d held a highly successful viewing of 101 Dalmatians, for which she’d ordered full-out costumes, including a Cruella Deville one for herself and a puppy one for her kid. In her post, she writes that life was “getting stressful so… this felt intuitive somehow?” Then she added this bit of wisdom: “Truly absurd things cut through the noise of sadness or sameness.”
This is not an intuitive lesson for me. I tend to dwell on the hard and the sad, consider it more real than the light and the glad. This is an ironic response, considering that I spent my most formative years worshipping Madonna, wearing lace fingerless gloves and neon bangle bracelets while declaring into a soft-bristled brush that I was… Li-ving in a muh-terial world… and I was a muh-terial girl.
If anyone can access the importance of frivolity, of lighthearted absurdity, it’s children of the eighties. We learned math when AquaNet made hair six feet high, heard the phrase “Iran-Contra” when there were no acceptable colors other than neons. We might have held dear the following pop lyrics:
“We're talking away
I don't know what
I'm to say, I'll say it anyway…”
and,
“Ooh, baby, baby. Baby, baby.
Ooh, baby, baby. Ba-baby, baby
Get up on this…”
So, when times get hard—which right now is always—maybe do something absurd and fun for no reason. Maybe make costumes for your next living room film screening. Maybe see how large a fort you can build with every pillow in the house. Maybe throw a full-blown Eighties Day and remember—or visit for the first time—an era that believed it was a brilliant idea to sell heat-sensitive, color-changing neon T-shirts to kids entering puberty. (Whatever could have gone wrong?)
Go on… Find your absurd fun.
When my memoir, Raising a Rare Girl, came out, I had the immense privilege of talking to Kate Bowler on her podcast, Everything Happens. You can check out the conversation here.