Should lady pugilists at the coming 2012 Olympics in London be forced to wear skirts instead of boxing shorts? That subject was raising hackles among female athletes from 21 countries during warm-up bouts in England during the last week of November.

The International Olympics Committee is debating what to do and, of course, if they decide to make skirts mandatory, the immediate question becomes, "Mini, midi, or maxi?" This situation caused me to recall something similar right here in our Flathead County 14 years ago. That really fun time is worth a revisit through my column of May 15, 1997.

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On the first day, the Associated Press story said, "Flathead County Commissioners have taken on the roll of fashion police." On the second day, the AP reported, "Scorn and defiance have greeted a Flathead County employee ‘dress code' requiring shorts and skirts of female employees to cover their knees."

The Daily Inter Lake's headline said, "Knee's aren't knocking over county dress codes." All but one county department head got into the act with open defiance and most used works like "ridiculous." Even dignified judges and prosecutors had fun with the commissioners' "no knees" memo. There were hallway jokes about "calving time" and puns about such things as "bare repellent" and "shins are in."

As for Montana's "oldest living reporter," the record should be made perfectly clear, I did not actually call our most powerful elected county officials "the three stooges." The facts are, mysterious subconscious forces took over my brain during the morning news broadcast on May 9, and what came out during an updated story was this, "The ‘knee memo' was issued unanimously, having been signed by all three county commissioners, Curly, Moe and Larry."

It is certainly not my fault public curiosity immediately mounted over which commissioner was who? Having great faith in grass-roots participation on all government issues, I graciously accepted citizen feedback, not skirting the issue, and the results were almost unanimous.

The people's choice was Robert Watne as Curly, Howard Gipe as Larry, and Dale Williams received the most votes as Moe. Anyone still having questions about any of these matters should not bother the busy media, but instead address concerns directly to the commissioners who always have time for dealing with the bare essentials of county business.

Hope this clarification puts that sensitive issue to rest for once and all.

(The "dress code" idea was quickly abandoned, and everyone involved breathed a deep thigh of relief.)

Speaking of knees, one of the sales guys at work says he had a girl friend in college who wore a black garter just above the knee ... "in memory of those who had passed beyond."

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2011 prologue: Were I now serving on the International Olympic Committee, I'd be the very last one to go and tell Mohammed Ali's two-fisted daughter what to wear while she's beating up on somebody.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.