Come and knock on our door

If you watched "Three's Company" on ABC, it most likely was because you liked John Ritter's "Jack" character, the perplexed and frustrated male with two roommates, or Suzanne Somers as Christmas "Chrissy" Snow, who joined Joyce DeWitt as the other roomies. The jiggling and the double entendre jokes were nonstop, which was good, because those things were about all the show had going for it. Naturally, it was what they called a ratings "blockbuster." 

For the real comedy of the show, I enjoyed Norman Fell playing Stanley Roper, the perpetually perturbed landlord, because it was such fun to see him in that sort of role again. He was Mr McCleery in "The Graduate," the landlord who kept accusing Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) of being "one of those outside agitators." 

But life takes its funny twists. Here all these years later, which character from that rather forgettable show is getting the attention?

It's Helen Roper, Stanley's wife, played by Audra Lindley, who flounced around the apartment building all day in a red fright wig and wild caftans, or muu-muus as those huge baggy sack dresses were once known.

Suddenly, people (not just women!) are dressing and cos-playing as Helen all over the nation, and, you have to figure, the world at large. Social Media is promoting these Mrs Roper Romps and people are breaking their necks to be her for the fun of it!

The Helen character was perfect sitcom fodder: she was up in everybody's bidness, arguing with her husband, and, it being the 70s, doing flower arranging and macramé.

As these things are wont to do, it all began in New Orleans at the LGBTQ celebration known as Southern Decadence. “New Orleans is where it occurred first and then San Diego. We just got together and made it happen here,” says Jen Lewis, one of the founders of the "The Ypsilanti Helens."

Kerri Pepperman, whose husband Jason Ringholz participates dressed in a rainbow caftan, says, “This is like pandemic attire. And now we have a license to be comfortable in our caftans in public. I think there might be a little post-pandemic retro thing going on right here.”

When the first news of the incipient pandemic broke in 2020, we had no idea of the toll it could take, the lives lost, the illness, the societal disruption, the changes that we thought would only be temporary. We had no idea what was coming.

But Mrs Roper did.