The Dress

A recent and ongoing phenomenon around the world is the reaction people have had to “The Dress.”  Most of you who are reading this will now sigh and say, “Ah, The Dress.” Those readers who have been living in their bedrooms because they have run out of clean underwear, may not be aware of what The Dress is, so Life in the Boomer Lane will enlighten you:

This past Wednesday, a Tumblr user posted a photo of a $77 dress and asked people for their opinions as to the colors. She wrote,  “I see it as white and gold. My friend right here sees it as blue and black. I CANT HANDLE THIS.  If that’s not gold my entire life has been a lie.”

Some of you may scoff that a person would declare her entire life a lie over the color of a dress. Life in the Boomer Lane can relate. Just recently, she discovered that her body, when seen from behind, actually seems to belong to another person, making her own entire life a lie. In this case, the case of The Dress, the world reacted. The Earth stopped revolving, as virtually everyone on the planet tried to figure out this conundrum.  Surgeons walked out of surgeries in process, people erroneously ate gluten, and Rep Louie Gohmert forgot to say anything stupid or offensive.  ISIS issued a fatwa on The Dress.  Republicans blamed Obama for the hysteria, as a way of promoting The Affordable Care Act.

Since there are more experts than people on the planet, it didn’t take long for the experts to weigh in.  Hundreds of explanations were postulated, addressing visual acuity, color theory, and the effect of inverted qualias. All explanations made sense up to a point, until experts concluded that none of what they had said could really explain everything about this particular Dress. The Alien Channel expressed concern that aliens were using The Dress as part of a mass hypnosis experiment.

Crisis hot lines were established for people who were unable to get on with their lives, once they had seen a photo of The Dress.  Both Dr Phil and Dr Oz devoted entire shows to The Dress and linked it to weight management.  Monica Lewinsky, until now, the owner of the most-talked about dress in history, was interviewed on national TV and asked how she felt about this particular Dress overshadowing her own very famous dress during the Clinton Administration. Her comment was, “It’s unlikely that anyone wearing this dress will have as much fun wearing theirs as I did wearing mine.”

QVC started selling knockoffs of the dress in fuchsia/magenta, /turquoise/hot pink, and teal/lime green. Sizes ranged from XXX to XXXX. QVC promised viewers that these copies had met all FDA safety standards and would match all of the jewelry that was to be shown in the next segment of the show.  Women called in, saying they were ordering the dresses in all colors. Within minutes, the inventory was gone.

Rumors began circulating that the same person who posted the original photo of The Dress was about to unleash a photo of a Pair of Shoes on Tumblr.  Therapists’ phones began ringing off the hook. Survivalist websites posted ways people could deal with this invasion of personal rights, and provided maps to remote areas where they could hide out.  Fox News blamed Obama for The Shoes, even though they couldn’t come up with a reason why he would have done that. They concluded by saying, “He just does shit.”