Take Me Out to the Ball

It took a village, to get me in this dress.

St. Barbara is the patron saint of artillerymen in the Marine Corps, and every year the artillerymen have a ball in her honor. Dean is an administrator (meaning he has a desk job), but he is attached to an artillery unit here so we were cordially invited to the event.

At 9 feet tall and 6 months pregnant, I am about 4.5 times the size of a normal Japanese woman and so I cannot really buy too many clothes out in town. Ergo, I ordered a dress for the event online about a month prior, to give it time to ship here—a beautiful ivory-colored strapless number with silver beaded detail. When I went to make the purchase, I took some measurements, approximated a weight gain curve, closed my eyes, and selected a size 10. Just to give you a frame of reference, I wore a strapless dress for Tracy's wedding in June in a size 4, so I figured if worse came to worse I could always get the ball dress taken in by a tailor if it was too big. When the dress came in two weeks later, however, it fit perfectly. No need for tailoring. Then last night came. I flat-ironed my hair, put on my face, shimmied the dress over my head, and turned around to have Dean zip it for me. He just laughed. “No way is that going to zip!” he choked out through his guffaws. Well, it took ten minutes and a fair amount of cajoling the poor overwrought zipper, but we squeezed me in! Then it was time to waddle off to the ball.

Most of the time I like a plated meal service, but the buffet was really very good and what's more, it stayed open all night, so no complaints there. I tried to order a seltzer with lime but not knowing the Japanese word for seltzer, my pointing and gesturing somehow got me tonic water which I have to tell you tastes really bad without the gin in it.

There was a lot of standing up and sitting back down, as I guess Colonels and Generals tend to expect standing ovations to their speeches. Knowing it takes a bit of energy to maneuver myself into a standing position these days, Dean kindly offered a hand to help me up to my feet. As he lifted, he made a grunting noise like he was picking up a rhinoceros. This earned him some death-ray eyes, which I've been working on because as everyone knows, all moms need a LOOK. I daresay mine is pretty effective, because subsequent gentlemanly aids by Dean were suffered through in silence.

After the dinner and the speeches, the artillerymen put on funny skits about how God created artillerymen, who were naturally just the bravest and the brightest in all of the Marine Corps and the world, for that matter. After that, they mixed up a disgusting “punch” drink with ingredients donated from the audience like sweat wrung from a sock, and then had an unfortunate young artillerymen sample a glass and proclaim it “very tasty, sir.” There were also song parodies and story-telling, so really it was a very entertaining evening.