I have been dating BF for two months. He is awesome, crazy in a good way, and generous. Last Tuesday he dropped by my house unexpectedly with a present. How sweet! I was in my room drinking wine and preparing for my Wednesday morning clients and afternoon piano students — talk about multitasking.

BF: “I just saw this and wanted you to have it”

ME: Eyes immediately drawn to the neon pink-green wrapping paper and bag “Aw, thanks, you really shouldn’t have!” (Wait, I know that bag…)

Flashback to college circa 1998: UVA southern frat-tastic boys with bangs in khakis, blue blazers, orange and blue bow ties, and penny loafers. Petite and perfect blonde girls with their grandmothers’ pearls drinking whiskey from a flask and checking out who’s boyfriend is the cutest. Oh, and wearing perfect Lilly Pulitzer dresses — at a FOOTBALL GAME. Robin feeling oh so less-than-perfect wanting to look exactly like those girls AND really desperately wanting to be in jeans and a hoodie tailgating with cheap beer in solo cups and, you know, actually watching the game instead of the boys. Hence my immediate  hatred and subsequent boycott of UVA football games and Lilly dresses.

BF: “Will you try it on?”

ME: Eyes wide and trying not to violently shake my head and scream nooooo! “Umm, right now? Uh okaaay.”

I felt like a linebacker for the Redskins in drag, a 12 year old trying on mom’s dress, a combination of Sophia Vergara and JLo since those dresses seem to be made for women without curves, and that young and insecure Robin from her first UVA football game.

I flipped the EFF out!

ME: “Where do I have to wear this? I can’t! Return it! Are you trying to turn me into a preppy pearl-wearing sorority girl or a stepford wife?”

BF: Putting the dress away “The first rule of that dress is we never speak of that dress.”

It’s amazing how one dress could really hit a nerve like that. I wonder what other hidden triggers are hiding out there for BF to discover.

Oh. And for the record I’m not the only one. See? Look what I found on the interwebs: Lilly Pulitzer: what Satan dresses his enemies in.