Ebb and Flow

Published 12:00 am Monday, March 13, 2000

DEBORAH CORRAO / L’Observateur / March 13, 2000

For the first time in my life I am now wearing uniforms to work. It was achoice I was offered by my employer and, though I was a bit reluctant about it, I decided it was preferable to fumbling around in pre-dawn darkness trying to find something in my closet that: a. still fits, b. matches and c. doesn’tneed to be ironed.

My new uniforms consist of a variation on nurse’s scrubs in two colors, wine and hunter green. We were allowed to wear pants or skirts of our choice, butI opted to just order the matching pants from the catalog.

Now I wear wine on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and green on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I do have to admit it’s made life simpler in many respects,including the reasons listed above. It also gives me a great selection ofpockets for holding a variety of things I usually have to scrounge around in my purse for, such as keys, pens and change.

Big on the downside is the fact these scrubs are so loose and comfortable that it becomes easy to gain a little weight here and there, which I have (but I’m not blaming it on the scrubs quite yet). The biggest drawback, though,and the one that almost persuaded me not to wear the uniforms, is the loss of individuality. It took me almost five decades to find myself and carve outmy own identity, and now it seems I’ve just become another fish in a wine and hunter green pond.

But as I have learned in those almost five decades there are ways to get around just about anything. Remember how I told you I was offered a choicein the beginning? Well, on Fridays I wear a variation on the uniform: my long black dress or skirt with my wine smock. I also just bought a pair of winesuede shoes to wear on Fridays instead of the regulation sneaker.

It’s just like the rest of life (you knew there would be a moral to this story, right?). Sometimes you just have to march to a different drummer – youhave to break away from the rest of the crowd to be true to yourself.

Fortunately, after five decades it becomes a little easier.

Now if they’d only invent a uniform that washed itself.

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