We were ready to leave the restaurant last Thursday night but Mary Ellen was stalling. She had been fussing with her purse and made a couple of extra trips to the ladies’ room.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I want get home by 8:30 so we don’t miss 30 Rock.”
“Dick, we can’t leave just yet. If we go back to the house now, we’ll be in the gray zone. You know how I hate the gray zone.”
On most evenings Mary Ellen pulls into our driveway about 6:30, enters the house, turns on the network news and plays with the cat. She then takes off her professional business apparel—clearly not suitable for a three-hour stint of TV crime dramas—and slings on an old pair of jeans or sweats along with a flannel shirt. By 10:00, a good night’s sleep is on the radar, requiring a change into her cuddly PJs. She may watch a re-run of Law and Order in her sleeping garb before getting into bed with a good book.
That’s the routine. It seldom varies. But wait! On that particular evening we were going to arrive home from the restaurant somewhere between 8:30 and 9:00. Yes, that is the gray zone she was fretting about. The question: Is it worth going through the second clothing change or does one get directly into sleep attire? It’s not as sticky an issue as establishing peace in the Middle East, but it does pose a quandary.
I never face this predicament. Unlike my wife, whose career requires dressing like a grownup, I spend most of the day working in my basement home office, snapping the elastic band on my gray sweat pants and wiping mustard stains off my Bill Belichick pullover. Nevertheless, I’m tempted to get “sleep ready” way before my wife arrives home. “Why are you dressed for bed?” Mary Ellen will inquire when she walks in the house.
“I just got ready a little early.”
“I’d feel a lot better if you put your jeans back on. Otherwise, when we sit down for dinner, I’ll feel like I’m visiting you at the assisted living facility. I’m not ready to start thinking about that yet.”
“Why don’t you put on your pajamas, too, Mary Ellen?”
“What if someone rang the doorbell, Dick? What would the neighbors say about us if they thought we got ready for bed before Wheel of Fortune? We might as well head out to MCL in our slippers. ”
She had a point. Lounging around in a robe at dinnertime may have made Hugh Hefner an icon, but it was going to wreck my reputation in the cul de sac. I did wonder who else wrestled with this issue. I called my friend Bob last night, in the middle of the gray zone, about 8:00.
“Bob, this is Dick. What are you wearing?”
“Wow, you get weirder every day, don’t you?”
Bob didn’t really relate to this problem. Nor did most of my friends who I tried to explain it to. I did a little Googling. Not even one support group. There’s a lot of denial out there.
Right now, I have to wrap up this column. Mary Ellen is on her way home and I don’t want her to know I’ve been in my pajamas all day. I’m going to put on my jeans, so I can put my pajamas back on in a couple of hours. This is more stress than a high-powered job. Maybe we should all retire early.
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