Uncle Ernie is
Mad About Midriffs

Two girls, not old enough to be let out of the house, are walking toward us.
So they pass us and I look around at them after they’ve gone by.

“Ern,” says Kathleen, rather sharply, “don’t be ridiculous.”
“Who’s ridiculous?” I say.
“You are. Turn around and stop gawking. Haven’t you seen teenage girls before?”
“Yeah,” I say, “but not so much of them at one time. Last year they were all wearing miniskirts and now they think we all want to look at their navels.”
“Ern,” she says, “in case you don’t know, it’s not you they’re thinking about.”
And then she drags me into K-Mart to buy something for the granddaughter.
“At least Petula doesn’t have all her stomach showing,” I say.
“Well you’re wrong there,” she says. “Shelly says the teenagers next door have both got a ring in their navels and . . .”
“Yeah,” I say, “maybe them, but not Petula. She’s a decent kid. She goes to Sabbath school. It wouldn’t be any temptation to her.”
“Well, if you’d just let me finish,” says Kathleen, “I could tell you that Petula wants a ring too. What planet are you on, Ern?”
Well, I was getting a bit sick of this, so I said, “Kathleen, if this is such a great way to dress, when are you going to show your midriff?”
She stops dead and looks at me like I was Old Nick and says, very sharply, “Ern, you shouldn’t be let out of the house.”
And then she goes quiet. Not one more word till we get home. Don’t know why. I’m the one that gets shoved in the doghouse, but I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t me running around with the bare midriff.
But she’s really quite a decent sort, Kathleen is. Quite sensible. Always was. Dunno what I’d do without her, but she never did like me eyeing off the other sheilas.
I first met her at an MV camp. She really had the goods. On the Sunday we all went on a bushwalk and she wore a yellow sweater and she looked terrific. I’ll never forget the yellow sweater. All the other guys were trying to walk with her, but I didn’t give them a chance.
I never saw the yellow sweater again until we were married about five years later. By that time she couldn’t fit into it, but she told me all about it. She bought the sweater herself with money from her grandmother, but when her father saw it he said it was too tight. He took it away from her and hid it, but she found it and took it to the camp.
I’m glad she did. I might never have noticed her if it hadn‘t been for the yellow sweater.
Just as well she had me for her boyfriend. She really needed to be protected.
And if she were young now, you’d never catch her wearing a bare midriff. No sir! She was a sensible girl.
We were all sensible back in those days.