“…and there I was, walking around the store, not wearing any underwear.”
That was the line, verbatim. Yep, she said she was not wearing underwear in the store. Hmmm…was she wearing underwear now? Did she ever wear underwear? Did I really want to know?
I don’t know this lady’s name. Presumably she has a child in the same school as my daughter. I was walking on the sidewalk in front of the school with my two boys, on our way to pick up their sister. I passed this lady as she was going the other way with another woman and a few kids. As she walked past, I heard her say sotto voce to her friend, well, you know. No “chones”.
If I knew her at all, I would have certainly asked her why she wasn’t wearing underwear, oh, and what store was this? But even I don’t have the audacity to ask a complete stranger why she wasn’t wearing any pantsy poos in the store, especially when the remark wasn’t addressed to me, and I really shouldn’t even know she wasn’t wearing any. But still, I did wonder…
Maybe it went something like this:
They were going to be late for school again! Dripping from the shower, a threadbare towel covering what it must, she checks on her kids and realizes they are doing what they do every morning: nothing.
“Johnny, get your bunky out of bed now! You are going to be late! Don’t make me come in after you, mister!”
“Suzie, stop playing with your breakfast and get dressed!”
“Geez, Mom, you’re not dressed,” Suzie observes.
“Don’t you backtalk me, Miss Smarty Pants! Go put your clothes on!”
Sheesh! Why does every morning have to be such an ordeal? She hurries into her room to get dressed, and rummages through her underwear drawer. “Oh, great! I don’t even have any clean underwear! Well, there’s no time to wash any now, I’ll just have to go au naturel.” So she tugs on a pair of lightweight knit capri pants and a t-shirt, stuffs her feet into sneakers, and runs out to shift her kids into second gear.
She has to hover over Suzie to make sure the little girl’s engine doesn’t stall getting dressed. “You’ll just have to wear the pink shirt, the blue one is dirty. Along with everything else.” Good grief, why is it that she can do four loads of laundry every day, but nothing is ever clean?
“Put your homework in your backpack. Come on, move!”
“OK, Johnny, where are your shoes? Did you brush? Oooh, don’t pick your nose! Oh, man, especially don’t eat it! Well, that’s going to have to be breakfast, buddy, because we are late!”
She tosses the kids into the family van, and heads off to school. At the designated “unloading zone” in front of the school, she hits the button that automatically slides open those smooth van doors, and tells her little darlin’s, “Get out!”
“Mom, we forgot to get juice boxes! You’re supposed to bring juice boxes for the class party today, remember?”
“OK, OK, don’t panic. The party isn’t supposed to start until 10. I’ll go to Target and I’ll have them to your class in plenty of time, OK? Now go!” (Actually, except for the underwear part, up to this point it sounds more like my day.)
Well, no time to go home and fix the lingerie problem now. Besides, she needs laundry soap anyway, so she’ll just get that too while she’s at Target. Heading the other direction, she arrives at her favorite big box store. Parks, grabs her purse, jumps out, clicks the little button on her key ring that magically makes the mobile rectangle lock up tight, and trips into Target. Gosh, maybe there is time to just look at those v-neck sleeveless sweaters that were in the Sunday ad. She ambles across the store to the ladies clothing section. Is it her imagination, or is she getting some odd looks? No, that woman definitely sneered. Well, she has lost a little weight lately. Probably just jealous. Women can be so catty.
In the ladies department she finds the sale sweaters. Hmm…blue would go best with her bleached hair, but red is so… saucy! She selects a red sweater in a small, OK, better get the medium, who is she kidding, and heads to a mirror where she holds it up to herself. Oooh, red is nice! Especially with these white capris she’s wearing. Hold on there a minute. Is that…oh, no. These pants are see-through!
Well, that explains a lot! She holds the sweater strategically, gets a cart, pushes it in front of her, walking very, very close to the cart. She pinches her cheeks together tightly (you know which cheeks I mean), hoping it will make her booty smaller and her pants hang a little more loosely from the rear view. She can’t leave without those stupid juice boxes, so taking very quick small little steps so she doesn’t have to put much space between her body and the cart or unclench her cheeks, she goes to the food section and throws a few 10-packs of Capri Sun in the cart. She usually gets the 100% juice stuff for her own kids, but this is cheaper, and heck, she’s not going to pay a fortune to hydrate someone else’s kid! Doing the same sort of geisha walk, she hurries to get laundry soap so she can take care of her little problem sometime today, and heads to the checkout.
The checker looks at her oddly as she obsessively hugs the cart, but hey, he thinks, whatever floats your boat, lady. She makes it to the car, throws her bags in the back, and thankfully heads home where she will have just enough time to put on some very dark, very loose pants, and deliver the juice boxes.
Well, it could have happened that way. I imagined a few other scenarios as well, but I like the G rated version best. She didn’t look like she had many public R (or worse) moments. Maybe a few PG-13. But if I ever see her again, I’m going to have a hard time looking her in the face, ya know what I mean?