Nice skirt.

Seven years ago, I bought a skirt at Le Chateau, a somewhat hoochy Canadian store. Of course, the skirt wasn't actually hoochy (you could find good stuff amongst the hooch if you really tried hard enough). It was long, patterned, and unique. Very unique. In a really good way, I believed.

I didn't bring it with me on my mission. It was a wrap around skirt, so I didn't want to have to deal with that. It was also a hard pattern to match with a button-up shirt or a blazer, so altogether it was a bad choice for the mission. But sometimes when I thought of home, I thought of this skirt and how joyous our reunion would be.

Once I got home and reacquainted myself with my skirt, I began to wear it on a fairly regular basis. Every time I put it on, I looked in the mirror and thought, "Dang, this is a cute skirt!" I'd go out with confidence during the day (except for all the times the wind would blow my skirt open, because that gets annoying).

Then, one day, I realized something very interesting. On all these days that I wore my skirt, no one ever complimented me on my skirt or my outfit. I started wondering if my skirt were actually ugly to other people, whereas it was still really cute to me. I started paying attention to whether or not I was getting compliments. I wasn't. Ever. But I kept wearing the skirt because I really thought that it was cute.

One day when I was wearing this skirt, I stopped by Tolkien Boy's work for a quick visit. He greeted me with a smile and then said something like, "That is a very medieval-looking skirt!"

I was unsure how to take this. Tolkien Boy is a self-proclaimed fashionphobe, and so for him to comment on what I was wearing was something huge. But to call my skirt medieval? What did that mean? All I could think of was the Medieval Club, and in relation to that, "medieval" could be nothing but an insult. And yet, Tokien Boy had taken an Old English class... And so I probed.

"Medieval? Meaning...? Is that a good thing, or a bad thing, Tolkers?"

He gave an answer that was as vague as the original statement, and under pressure finally conceded that it was a nice skirt. My first compliment in years. From a fashionphobe. Apologies to Tolkien Boy, but I couldn't trust it.

Only then something strange happened. About an hour later, as I was walking outside, a stranger approached me to tell me that my skirt was really cute. Still later that day, I ran into Tolkien Boy in the library, and as we stood talking, a friend of mine passed by and---in passing---told me how great my skirt was.

The fact is that since Tolkien Boy's comment on my skirt, I can no longer wear the skirt without receiving compliments. Perhaps it was cursed or bewitched for a while and needed only special words from Tolkien Boy to break the spell. I'll never know, but I'll walk confident, knowing that the skirt can continue to enjoy years of looking good.