If You Needed A Better Reason to Be Glad You Aren't Me

I was wearing one of my favorite skirts the other day, my green silk wrap-around (and no, I'm not going into meaningless details, the "wrap-around" part is significant) and it was pretty darn cold outside. As in so cold you can't tell if all your body parts are in the right place cold. I had to load some stuff into my car parked in the driveway so I put on my down jacket, grabbed my gear, took a deep breath and headed out into the wretched temperatures to my minivan.

I struggled, stacks of stuff in my arms, to open the side door then bent over to set my boxes on the floor of the car when a particularly nasty gust of wind whipped down the drive way and around the car.

"I hate this weather!" I thought in my most grumbly mental voice, thinking how unusually cold it was, as I straightened up to shut the door.

But as I did so I happened to glance at my feet on the way up and I noticed, there around my ankles--in a very surreal way---was my beautiful green skirt.

"What's that?" I thought for half a second before realizing that I was having an out-of-clothing experience. Yes, there was my favorite skirt, no longer in the place it was supposed to be, and for those of you who aren't following my delicate language that means I was standing there in the driveway of a nicely landscaped middle-class residential neighborhood with my skirt completely overcome by gravity and my hiney available to meet and greet the elements.

That's about the time the car drove by.

I made a quick grab for it though when you're as tall as I am and when you're standing there as bare as I was the ground seems pret-ty far away. The skirt had come completely untied and it's rather hard to thread silk ties back through the proper places when your fingers are numb.

My big puffy jacket--though unfortunately not a very long puffy jacket--was in the way but I threw the skirt around me as best I could and I did a quick glance around to see who was looking (as if anyone could have missed the show). Nearby windows were empty, probably because they'd rushed off to call the police to report the crazy lady in the puffy pink coat mooning the neighbors.

It must have come untied inside, the gust of wind loosened it enough to drop it and the rest, as they say, is history. It had been so cold that I hadn't felt it go--and it would be the day I'd chosen not to wear a slip because of how badly it bunched with that particular skirt.

Why me? Mother said there'd be days like this . . . though I'm pretty sure she never lost her skirt in front of the neighbors . . . I guess I should be glad I wasn't at Costco or the school or at church. It could always be worse, couldn't it? And in case you were wondering I haven't worn that skirt since, I feel completely betrayed and doubt that I could ever trust it again. Where are warning labels when you need them?