➢ In any dining situation, there is a 98% chance that I will step away from the table with a new food stain on my lap, chest or sleeve.

➢ Once while sitting in an audience I shouted “find your light” to an actor on stage because he was delivering his lines in the shadows.

➢ I have walked into a room full of mid-level banking executives with my skirt tucked into my pantyhose and no underwear underneath.

So it might come as a bit of a shock to you that I am a graduate of charm school. And not just any charm school, Wendy Ward Charm school ran by our local Montgomery Wards. I’ll let that sink in a moment.

Now my mother thought charm school might instill some lady like behavior in her coming of age daughter and I was willing to suffer through the charm sections to get to the Wendy Ward Pacesetters which was only available to charm graduates.

The Pacesetter classes are loosely termed “model preparation classes” and teaches how to apply make-up, how to work the runway and at graduation I’ll get the opportunity to spend 45 whole minutes standing completely still on a platform in the misses section wearing a peach polyester pantsuit, try my best to convince customer’s that I am an actual mannequin.

But first I have to suffer through the charm sections where I’ve already learned that a gentleman should lead a lady down the stairs and follow her up to catch her in case she falls; that it’s proper if not impossible to enter and exit a vehicle with your knees never separating, and that it’s okay to point your finger at an object but never a person.

Charm school starts promptly at 5:30pm every Wednesday and punctuality is expected. Today, all of that goes out the window, when I spend an hour after school flirting with Randy the after school janitor, and before I know it, it is 4:30 and I only have 28 minutes to make it home, change clothes and make it to the 4:58 bus.

After running seven blocks, I arrive home a red, hot, sweaty mess. And I have no time to cool off. As students of Wendy Ward Charm School we are required to wear either a dress, or skirt and blouse, pantyhose, and pumps.

And so, the search begins; the chaos of my parents impending divorce is reflected by the mess in my room; clothes are thrown everywhere, along with shoes, homework and other miscellaneous 13 year old necessities.

While it is an overwhelming site for the uninitiated, I have a good sense of where everything is and what pile of clothes are clean and what is not. My go-to outfit is a brown tweed fitted skirt, and polyester ivory blouse with lace at the collar. I like it because it looks like something Blair Warner from “Facts of Life” would wear. The skirt is sitting right on top of the clean pile of clothes, pantyhose are found underneath my bed and my ivory top is wrinkled up behind my door. There’s no time to iron. I throw it on, check the mirror and head out the door. It’s now a four-block sprint to the bus stop.

The Portland Tri-Met bus, which drops-off right at Mall 205 where Montgomery Wards is a flagship store, pulls up just as I arrive to the stop. I get on and pay my fare, and I notice there’s only one other person on the bus. An older man who appears disheveled and dirty. His unkempt hair and toothless grin are what I notice first. It’s his smell however that hits me second.

He’s sitting near the front and as soon as the doors on the bus close behind me I can smell his foul odor filling the interior. He smells like a cat box used by a hundred cats.

I find the furthest seat away from him and immediately open a window for fresh air. I keep my fingers crossed that he’ll get off the bus soon. The smell is over powering.
About five minutes into my ride, my prayers are answered and he exits..

Hold on a minute. The stench of cat box is still on the bus, it’s still with me, and it still reeks. That’s when I realize…I am the source of this musty, sour, cat piss.
I look over my clothes, I don’t see a stain but clearly I’m the carrier. One of my mom’s five cats has used my bedroom as her personal catbox and I’m on the 185 bus to charm school.

At the age of 13 one thing is certain analytical skills have not yet been refined. Which is why I continue on towards Wendy Ward, I’m dumb enough to think that even though I can smell myself no one else will.

But I do want to give myself a little insurance, so when I’m dropped off at the doors of Montgomery Ward, I head straight for the perfume counter. I know exactly what will hide my scent: Vanderbilt perfume. I know this because when my grandmother uses it she doesn’t smell as old. Today is not the day to dab a little on my wrists, I need a full on assault. I find the tester bottle and proceed to shower myself in spray mists, until the older woman behind the counter tells me to put – the – bottle – down.

If a were a perfumer I would say that I was now wearing a strong backnote of cat urine, with a heavily infused top note of grandma perfume, and a musky note of teen sweat.

And so I head up the escalators to the floor where furniture and appliances are sold, to a back door that houses the Wendy Ward Charm School. Secretly, I always feel a little privileged going into the Wendy Ward office. There’s no outside signage, and you have to go through the door that says employees only. At 13 I get a little excited to see the corkboard with employee announcements, OSHA standards and store holiday schedules.

The door to Wendy Wards is open and I walk in to see several of the girls already sitting ready to go, the room is filled with teen laughter.

“Hey Deanna, come sit here…have I got news for you!”

Heidi is pointing to the seat that’s right in the middle, front and center. It’s not a huge room there are three rows of chairs. I thought I could just come in and find a seat in the back but Heidi wasn’t going to have any of it.

“Come on, before class starts.”

The slow death march begins. As I settle in my seat, the tone of the room becomes suddenly different. All of the laughter stops, replaced by quiet whispering.

Tammy who is sitting to my right, gets up and says something about needing to go to the bathroom, Julie joins her. One after another, after another each of the girls finds an excuse to leave the room, even Heidi who has big news, now needs water before class starts.

As I sit there in the room all by myself I catch my reflection in the makeup mirrors lining the room and see on my right shoulder the top of what turns out to be a foot long stain that runs down the entire back of my blouse.

It’s confirmed, not only do I know, but I know they know and I know they know I know. And when Ms. Morlan our beloved charm instructor ushers the girls in for class no one says a word to me for the next two hours.

I have no idea what was taught that day, as I sat in charm school with cat piss on my blouse. I was mortified and shamed knowing I was making the girls around me miserable. But I did learn a few things; Vanderbilt perfume only hides old people smell not cat urine, if you think you stink you’re probably right, and sometimes it’s the embarrassing times in our lives that make us the most charming.