Ankle Pants and Senioritis

A couple of weekends ago, my choral society had its spring concert, featuring the a work called "Letters from War" by Paul Moravec and John Rutter's "Mass of the Children."  The concert itself went splendidly, thanks primarily to the indefatigable efforts of our both our director and accompanist (who was also the director of the fabulous children's choir which performed).  The soloists were particularly outstanding, as was the children's choir, and the concert went extremely well.  There is nothing like beautiful music to make the heart swell and the spirit soar!

I also had the fortune to learn from some of my mistakes at the previous concert; for starters, I knew where the concert hall was this time, so I didn't spend 15-20 minutes wandering lost around campus, in part because no one had told me that the name of the music building was the same as that of the concert hall.  I also brilliantly chose not to put on my concert attire till after the run-through because standing for two hours under stage lights in all-black clothing?  Not the best idea.  Instead, this spring I wore flip-flops and regular clothes and passed the rehearsal quite comfortably, bar all the standing in a confined area right next to the edge of the top riser. 

After the run-through, I stared in fascination at the mitten-shaped harp cover (it's Michigan!), then changed clothes and grabbed one of the sack dinners.  Okay, so I clearly didn't learn everything since I promptly got sesame seeds and Harvest Cheese Sun Chip dust all over my concert clothes.  Note to self:  change AFTER eating next time.  In spite of that small faux pas, I got through the concert without falling off the risers and breaking anything new (thank heaven for small favors), though I was exhausted after standing in my little square foot of space for nearly 4 hours.  I get that it's cheaper to rehearse before the concert in terms of paying musicians, and I don't even mind because it gave me a chance to get all my musical brain farts out ahead of time so I didn't repeat them during the concert; I just wish we could sit for the rehearsal because that's a lot of freakin' standing around.

Anyway, though the concert was great and the music transcendent, in typical Ginger-style things didn't get "interesting" until after the program was over.  Once we'd finished, I went to chat with a friend who'd come, then I went to grab my things and head out.  I told the hubs I wanted ice cream and so we agreed to meet at Dairy Queen.  As soon as I got to the car I immediately stripped off my knee-high hose and black shoes and put my flip-flops back on.  Blessed relief!  I looked around and saw that the parking garage was largely deserted, so I decided to change out of my sweaty clothes there as well.  In my mind it seemed like a good idea; I figured I'd pull up my pants, which would be camouflaged by my long black skirt, then I could fasten them and slip the skirt off.

Didn't quite work out that way, needless to say.

I successfully got the pants over each flip-flop and was in the process of trying to pull them up under my skirt, which was not going quite as smoothly as I'd envisioned, when I heard someone a car's door locks unclick behind me.  So there I am, standing beside my van's open side door in the parking garage, with my skirt pulled half up and pants around my ankles.  No doubt it looked like I was trying to take a whiz (or worse). 

I grabbed the front of my pants and pulled them up to my knees.  I stood there, at a bit of a loss for what to do next.  It's kind of hard to be discreet when you know someone is in a car behind you trying to figure out what the hell the psycho woman across the parking garage is doing.  I settled for leaning in the van and grabbing the rest of my clothes, which I threw in the front seat.  I then slammed shut the side door and proceeded to climb into the driver's seat.  Or, more accurately, I tried to climb into the driver's seat, which was considerably more challenging with my pants around my ankles.  I finally managed to hoist my heinie into the seat and swing my be-panted ankles ("pants on the ground, pants on the ground--looking like a FOOL wit your pants on the ground!!") onto the floor board.  I then spent the next five minutes trying to get my pants up and fastened under my skirt, using the Weeble Wobble method of yanking first one side a couple of inches then switching cheeks and working up the other side a couple of inches because I was too hampered by the skirt simply to hoist the pants straight up.

Once I got the pants maneuvered into position, I tried to fasten them, but had difficulty.  Because of the skirt and the way I'd pulled them up, they were angled oddly high in front.  I finally got them fastened, looking like nothing so much as an 80-year-old man with pants nearly up to my nipples (minus the suspenders).  Rather than attempt the reverse operation with my skirt, I pulled it straight up and over my head and threw it into the back seat of my van.  Success! 

So there I sat with my wedgie and wearing my khaki old-man pants with a black shirt and pearls.  Yup.  I gave up on changing my shirt because there were still people in sight on the back dock of the concert hall, so I tossed the rest of the clothes aside and decided to head towards Dairy Queen.  Now for both concerts I've not had too much difficulty actually getting to campus and the vicinity of the concert hall, but both times I've had a much harder time finding my way out of the confusing twists and turns on campus, because you can't get out the same way you go in.  So I drove around and found my way out eventually, but then couldn't figure out how to get back to the main drag so I could find the Dairy Queen.  I ended up getting rather lost, no thanks to the TomTom app on my phone, which had recently been updated and which decided I needed to click through several licensing screens and such before allowing me to use it.  I finally had to pull off the road, turning around in the gravel parking lot of some tiny church on a hill and parking till I could click through all the stupid TomTom nonsense till I could access the program and find my way out.

I turned up at the Dairy Queen some 20 minutes after the hubs, who was sitting in his little Miata and watching all the co-eds infesting the parking lot and front of the DQ.  Since I have not yet been to this particular Dairy Queen, I was unaware that it was primarily a walk-up and that they didn't have indoor seating.  After standing for 4+ hours, the last thing I wanted to do was fight through the crowd of perfect-looking Southern college students in my old-man pants and incongruous pearls to suck down ice cream while being judged.  Um, no thanks.  I decided that we should go to Baskin Robbins instead, and took off around the corner.  I got there and parked next to some awesome-looking classic cars in the parking lot, one of which was a spectacular teal color.  While I waited for the hubs to arrive, I was able to get my pants re-situated into a more comfortable position.

Once the hubs arrived we went into Baskin Robbins, but nothing really sounded good.  I made some comment about a root beer float and the guy waiting on us said, "Oh, you want a root beer float??"  I told him yeah, then he promptly informed me they couldn't do that.  Indian-giver.  We negotiated a few more times and I finally ended up with a mint chocolate chip shake, but I told him to put whipped cream on it because it had been one of those evenings and he owed me since he reneged on my float.  First the guy rang me up for 9.65, but then he must have felt bad because he punched a few more keys and then told me "It's $8.74--if anyone asks, you're a senior."

DUDE.

Oh, no, you did NOT just say that. 

Seriously, Dude, I'll pay the extra dollar.  I don't care how bad you feel, don't be announcing to everyone in here that I am a SENIOR.  For the love of God, I'm only 47!!

Check out the order number...told you calling me a "senior" was evil!

I do appreciate the guy's efforts to try to make me feel better, but that was probably not the best way to accomplish it.  I paid my senior bill, the group with all the classic cars got up and drove away.  Bye, cool cars!  Then we found a table and say.  As we ate our treats, it occurred to me that I was sitting in the middle of a Baskin Robbin's at 10 pm at night wearing a black concert shirt and pearls...I could almost hear Chandler's voice in my head saying "Could you BE any more 'Designing Women?'"  Well, probably I could, because I sincerely doubt any of the Designing Women would ever be caught in a parking garage with their pants around their ankles.  First this, then my naked laundry time with the water thief.

Clearly I cannot be trusted with clothes.  Pretty ironic for a seamstress, no?