Cute band teacher top

So today I decided to take a little bit of a risk and wear a cute pink top with lace on the front to school today. It totally backfired, because one of my fifth grade students wore The Exact Same Top!! How humiliating!

In case you're wondering whether this has anything to do with being a band teacher, it does, really.

Why should language arts teachers and social studies teachers have a monopoly on cute tops? There is absolutely no law that says female band teachers have to dress dowdily because they might be single and have ten cats, or married and have two small children that are constantly sliming you with snot and crushing cheerioes down your front.

Male band teachers have it made. They can wear the same starched white button-down shirt and khaki pants year-round. It makes no difference what climate they live in or what season it is. I've never seen a male band director wear anything different, unless it was a navy blue pair of pants.

With the deepest regret and sorrow imaginable, I will tell you that I've had to completely give up on cute, high-heeled shoes. (Shut up, I might cry.)

In my former life as a young single urban professional (only one cat), I had a closetful of cute shoes, any pair of which I would happily take as my One Thing to a desert island.

There were the brown suede ankle boots with the lace up backs and the wooden heels that made an authoritative clack on a gallery floor.

And the pair of black and red pumps with an ankle strap that made me feel like a million bucks even though I bought them for twenty dollars at Nordstrom's Rack.

I had a pair of berry-red Mary Janes, with three-inch round heels in black. No wait, I still own those, although I haven't been able to wear them for five years because my feet gained a size after I had my first baby. I cannot make myself give them away because I love them that much. I still keep them in the lineup as if I could still wear them. Those shoes are the bomb...

Anyway, getting back to the clothing. When I moved out to the country and got married, I noticed that not a lot of women wore high-heeled shoes, in fact, they were wearing very practical clothing like pants and jeans and boots. Shoes with heels don't walk over the dirt very well.

After I started teaching, I wore high heels a couple of times. That didn't work out very well. Being a band teacher means you're on your feet a lot. Pretty much all class period, every class period. Furthermore, before rehearsal starts you are solving problems like not having music, needing reeds, and questions about upcoming events that students would get to ask when the entire group sits down so everyone can hear, so you have to rush around in a frenzy. Wearing high heels or shoes with cute but pinchy toes isn't really conducive to that.

So I gave up the shoes in favor of comfortable flats. Unfortunately I have far less success in the shoe store--of which we have approximately one in my rural milieu--judging whether or not flats will look good on me. Because, as one ex-boyfriend gleefully pointed out, I have kind of heavy calves, and we all know, at least those of us that are ladies, that a) boyfriends who say things like that should be dumped immediately, and b) high heels make your legs and ankles look slimmer.

But cute tops, getting back to the subject of this post, are not outside the realm of possibility for a youngish band teacher wanting to look her best every day and not like the stereotypical band teacher/working mom, and I'm just so depressed that a fifth grader had the exact same top on today.

What does that say about my taste anymore???