The first time I hear about adult bibs – ones for healthy adults – I laughed. It was during a gathering of my college girlfriends and late one night we were sharing things that annoyed us. Small things. Like a caller hanging up after we’d stopped what we were doing, gotten up from our Lazy Boys, walked across the room, picked up the phone, and said, “Hello.” Like pulling apart the sealed opening on a plastic bag of cake mix and losing our grip and the cake mix coated our feet. Like dropping food on the front of our white blouses while eating lunch at a restaurant and we had other places to go and no amount of water or fabric stain release would get the stain out. Or the stain release left a worse blotch than the ketchup we’d splattered across our fronts.
“I have a solution for that!” Friend said. “I made bibs for Harry and me. We wear them all the time when we get food at a drive through and eat in our car, but not in restaurants.” The room was silent. I envisioned my friend and her distinguished professional husband wearing giant sized yellow bibs trimmed with white eyelet lace and decorated with ducks. “And Harry wears it?” someone asked. “Yes, over his suit and tie,” Friend said. I burst out laughing and so did everyone, including Friend.
It seemed we each imagined Friend’s distinguished professional husband wearing different bibs. One with “I love Mommy” embroidered. One with Mickey Mouse. Another with a tiger cub and long orange strings to tie around the neck. Of course, that’s not what Friend made. She used plain blue fabric and her bibs fastened behind the neck with Velcro. She offered to make bibs for each of our husbands and us. That was ten years ago and I declined. But now I might wear a bib in my parked car beside McDonald’s. And maybe at home as my friend Elaine recently told me that she does.
Elaine says any food she attempts to put into her mouth somehow ends up on her blouse. So she wears a two-foot long bib made of terry cloth. Why so long? To cover the pillow that is on her lap and is a table for her plate. She needs a pillow table because she watches Jeopardy on TV while eating dinner. Even if she drops her plate onto the floor, her blouse and her pillow remain clean. Elaine offered to get me a long bib just like hers.
So now I have two sources for custom bibs. And I like the looks of the ones that are online and advertised as Dignified Bibs from Professional Fit Clothing. Adult bibs made from button-up-the-front madras plaid shirts or the front of a vest. They can be worn under a sweater or jacket and no one will ever know you are wearing a bib.
Who am I kidding? I don’t want a bib because of a vivid memory. I tied a towel-like bib around Grannie’s neck before I spooned soup into her mouth when she could no longer feed herself. I’m not there. But if I ever am, I want a happy bib. A yellow one trimmed with white eyelet lace and decorated with a duck.
Susan Writes 
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