Camo, you had one job

MOTHERLODE

You would think a tendency to wear a lot of camouflage clothing would make me less susceptible to sporting noticeable gravy stains. You would be wrong.

I started dressing like a 13-yearold boy when Christopher was 14. I simply started taking things he’d outgrown and calling them my own. Kids’ clothing is expensive and they wear it for about 10 minutes before you’re off to the store to replace them — the clothing, not the kids. I am thrifty; not terribly stylish, but definitely thrifty. I’d always liked men’s jeans better than women’s, and now I had a reason to wear them.

On a recent trip, I emerged dressed for dinner and a fellow guest’s eyes widened slightly as he announced I had a very eclectic fashion sense. If I had more money, I’d be considered eccentric. I do not, so I have to stick with eclectic, which means weird, no matter how much your friends try to tell you it doesn’t. On this particular evening, it was my camo pants, though teamed with very darling boots and a snappy jacket, which led him to his declaration.

The thing with camo is, it’s cheap. I get my camo pants at Old Navy for about 20 bucks, in the men’s section. They put that stuff on sale all the time and as long as it sort of fits, I’m going to call that a find. I broke my own code on that same vacation, however, and found a camo jacket that was not cheap but was also too fabulous to leave behind.

While attending a fairly swank event the other night, I was wearing my new jacket. They had several food stations set up, the kind where they feature upscale versions of food you recognize. They had a poutine bar; I am not a fan of poutine, but it had the shortest line and I was hungry.

I decided I’d just take a few highend fries and grab another glass of wine. As I waved off the cheese, the poutine-maker plopped some gravy on the fries. I think gravy on fries is kind of gross, but I reasoned it would be designer gravy and I was hungry. Whatever.

I ferried the fancy china scoopy bowl of fries back to the table, a fork and a glass of wine in the other hand. One fry later, and the fork was on the floor. I’d rested it in the bowl, and it had launched itself out. The woman next to me said she’d done the same thing.

I stared forlornly at my little pile of high-end fries lying in their little puddle of designer gravy. I debated trying to eat them with my fingers, but heard my late mother gasp somewhere in the back of my head.

Someone handed me another fork.

I carefully ate a few. A minute later I rose to shake someone’s hand, carefully perching the fork in the bowl. When I turned back, the fork was gone. I looked down. On the one tiny strip of white shirt that my camo jacket didn’t cover, I found the missing fork. I put it on the table and looked at two gravy blobs on my shirt. I rubbed them, which made them worse.

The whole point of wearing camo is so you can slop all over yourself and nobody will know. Camo’s only job is to blend several things together, like leaves and rocks and sand and gravy. Instead, my shirt took the hit.

At least I didn’t get any gravy on my new camo jacket.

At least I don’t think I did.