Mad for 'Mad Men'

This is my latest obsession. Mad Men. It's fantastic and I've been hearing about it for months - we even had our Christmas soiree themed with it in mind. I've just finished Season One and I really think I was born in the wrong decade. If I could have been a teenager or twenty-something in the late 50s and early 60s, well....that would have been swell!

The clothes, the hairstyles, the manners...I adore it all. Seriously, these women got to wear gloves and huge dresses every day. For no reason! I have to beg my peeps for an excuse to dress up and still have dozens of dresses that have never seen the dark of night.

Since watching it, I've started sitting up straighter, I've pulled out the cardigans reserved for library-dom and even wrote the following line in an email tonight, "Do be safe". It's out of control. Save for constant smoking and oppressive suburban life, it looks ideal in Technicolor. Everything looks acceptable - rampant affairs, martinis with lunch, calling grown women 'Sweetheart' at work.

While there are hints of the past these days, I long for the time when men always let a women order first, rose when she left the table, and wore a hat, which they tipped. Sigh. Sure, no decade is perfect, but give me the 50s over my 80s and 90s birthright any day.