Watch what you Wear

Clothes say a lot about a person. For example, if I wore a postmaster uniform, you would assume you could ask me the going price of a postage stamp, and presumably I would tell you to buy the really ugly liberty bell "forever stamps" since stamp prices will jump another 3-7 cents every 2 months and your stupid Picasso stamps will be worthless. (also, I just noticed that there is no cent symbol on the keyboard. There is the $ symbol...looking, looking...nope. No cent symbol. Strange).

Back to clothes. It is not only uniforms that say something about you. Very tight thin black jeans, a checkered middle-eastern scarf, large plastic framed vanity glasses(non-prescription lenses), and flat pointed shoes is a good indicator that you listen to obscure bands, spend your paycheck on PBRs and t-shirts from Urban Outfitters. OR you are a 56 year old lead singer from a 70's cover band that works 3 days a week serving pizza, and you date 20 year-olds whose biggest dream in life is to get a turntable to actually play their loose collection of vinyl on. No judgment.

The other night I went with my friend to a restaurant I had never been to before. I was wearing a super cute asian collared, red with silver and gold dandelion print dress from the 60's I found for $18. It was very cute. Very red. And very Asian. The restaurant we went to was Benihana. For those of you(like me), who don't know what that is, it is a Japanese(loosely inspired) restaurant with 0ver 80 locations in the US, including 9 branches in Texas and 4 in New Jersey. Imagine my delight(read: horror) at finding myself walking into an Asian-ish restaurant wearing what some could guess to be the uniform of it's employees. My best friend told me not to worry, no one would notice anyway.

The first round of food was served to us with impressive knife skills, however we were bathed in the steam and smoke from the grill being located at our table. I decided to go to the ladies room to see if any of my makeup had survived the grill-side facial. On the meandering walk back through the cavernous restaurant, I was asked by a woman "oh! is this your restaurant?" Even though all the employees wear black at this establishment, this woman assumed that because I was,

a). half the age of all the employees
b). a white woman
c.) wearing that damn red Asian-inspired dress!

that I owned the restaurant. Well, there was really only one response. I gave her a 100watt smile and said, "why yes! Are you enjoying your meal? Can I get your waitress to bring you anything else?" Thankfully the patron declined, because had they ordered another round of Sapporos or some edamame, they never would have gotten it. I posed my hands in that Buddhist prayer style, gave a bow-yes, BOW, and then told her "Dōmo arigatō" and walked away. I think that means "thank you"....or "make me a awesome sword so I can avenge myself against my former Judo Master"...I've seen Kill Bill like 20 times...either way... it sounded pretty good.

Well, thus proves my point that clothes are powerful. In the right hands they can bring you fraudulent restaurant ownership fame, but in the wrong hands they can make you blend in at a Phish concert. Moral of the story: I don't like hipsters or trust the post office. Also, Phish fans are ridiculous.