"Ordinary" was the worst word my mother could find for anything. Whenever she took me out for shopping, I found she wouldn't take any notice of the shop assistants when they suggested that some dresses were popular. She would say, "We're not interested in that. Haven't you got anything a little unusual?" And then the assistants would bring out all the strange colours no one else would buy. And later she and I would argue because I wanted to be ordinary but my mother wanted to be unusual. "I can't stand that hairdo  ," she said to me when I was in a boy hairstyle, " _ 's so terribly ordinary... Not ugly, not unsuitable. But ordinary ..." "Couldn't you please wear something else?" I asked one day when she was dressing for Parents' Day in tight   trousers and a bright pink sweater. "What't wrong with it!" "It's just that I wish you'd wear something ordinary." I said, "People won't laugh at." She looked at me angrily, "Are you ashamed of your mother? If you are, Mary, I feel sorry for you." Why did Mary ask her mother to change her clothes on Parents' Day?
Because her mother's clothes were out of style. Because she didn't like a pink sweater at all. Because she didn't like her mother to dress that way. Because she didn't want others to look at her mother.