Photo: Karen Forte
In middle school the uniforms
Were yellow tops and blue skirts
For the girls,
Yellow tops and blue slacks
For the boys.
The hue of yellow
In the official
Button downs,
Was a pale shade that made
Even the ruddy
Cheeks of children
Wash out
In the sun.
I used to think perhaps
This was the only color
Merchants had on overstock
When the school had first opened:
A fabric rescued
After years of fade brought on
By being forgotten
By everyone.
Oh, it was a decent enough school,
With friends I have kept
In touch with since the
Beginning of Sixth Grade.
It was the yellow hue
That had me blue.
Decades passed
And while
The beauty and the range
Of it in nature
Does indeed move me to tears,
I’m yet to own
A yellow garment
Even after
All these years.
For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Blue and Yellow
Na'ama Yehuda 
And I have this favourite yellow dress…
Wistful and lovely poem, Na’ama…
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Thanks, Dale.
I shared this with my middle-school friends — some of whom I’d continued to high-school with. It was a boarding school high-school, so connections only strengthened, and quite a lot of those in my high-school year have kept in touch and/or revived contact in recent years. I also shared it with two of my siblings who’d gone to the same school with me. And, yep. They remember the uniform …
😉
As for the ‘moratorium’ on yellow garb … it is my own thing … Other people can have yellow garments and it is all fab. 🙂 Enjoy your favorite yellow dress!
Hugs! Na’ama
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Awww… I didn’t go to a boarding school but a lot of us have remained in contact. We’ve known each other 40 years!
And I was teasing about the yellow dress… well. Yes and no. I look great in it 😉
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Some of my friends had kept in touch with each other throughout. I kept in touch with a handful and occasionally heard from others, but didn’t follow the others’ lives much. That is, till social media … and a tragedy with one of my high-school friends had brought us closer again. The son of one of my high-school friends was critically wounded and lay in an induced coma in a hospital, clinging to life. Another high-school friend contacted those of us she knew and we networked to locate more of us, to form a support system around her. The young man passed on after harrowing weeks in specialty hospitals’ ICUs. We were all heartbroken for our friend. The good that came of it was how people got together, and became closer again and how – now several years later – many of us remain in the high school chat group that was formed then. We share photos, stories, family news, silly things, and so on. It is a very sweet thing, even if the catalyst was a tragedy.
As for the yellow dress–Good for you! 🙂 I know some people who look good in yellow (though I don’t think even you would’ve looked your best in that faded hue that made me blue…) 😉
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People can say what they will about Social Media but it has brought a lot of people together. Including many from my elementary school days, as well as high school! And what a sad catalyst to get things going. As you said, take the good that came out of the tragedy.
Oh, I hear you… there are hues of yellow I would not be caught dead in!
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Indeed! I think that like any innovation that can be used for good or ill, so can social media. I’m not averse to technology–in fact, I find it to have great potential and I enjoy it daily (as I type, actually…). This doesn’t mean it needn’t have boundaries around it, or that the same faults of humans can be manifested (or amplified) though its use. So, yeah, yay to social media and yay to the potential it has to bring people together, even as we keep an eye on the ways people can abuse it (and do), and on how children need to be protected on it (as they should be) and be taught how to navigate it.
(Yeah, no to that blue-making hue… ;))
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Absolutely. I flush all the negative stuff from my feed… it’s my choice to spread the love and use it in a positive manner…
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Yeah sistah! 🙂 xoxo
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xoxo
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Great photo, lovely shadows in the water of the trees.
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Thank you! My friend Karen Forte took the photo. I used it as inspiration for the prompt. 🙂
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beautiful!
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Thank you! 🙂
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Stunning photograph. I always wondered who came up with school colours – none of them particularly appealing.
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I know! I can understand (and see how people will tolerate) light-blue on blue … or white over blue/black but I honestly cannot understand some combinations. In the city I’ve seen periwinkle gingham pinafores (in a not-for-anyone’s-body style) for girls, maroon on plaid skirts in another school, khaki pants and striped green jackets for boys … And on and on. I guess it does achieve the ‘pick out your student in a crowd’ but … 😉 My sister reminded me that her high-school uniform was in a similar awful hue of yellow (???), an ugly pleated brown woolen/gabardine thingy skirt, and a green sweater. The horror! 😉
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Simply stunning 😀
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Thanks, Cee … (the uniform sure wasn’t though … ;))
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