Boy Scout

I'm sitting here in my office with a huge run in my stockings and am debating whether or not I go to the mall to get another pair to replace them. I'm supposed to have a drink with someone this evening and, if I go straight from here, I have to stop at the mall and get a replacement, because I'll go batshit insane otherwise. I am the girl who had to pull over to a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway to change my shirt because I dribbled Diet Coke on it early in a drive set to end in Vermont. No way could I drive the entire way with cola stains on a white t-shirt. THE HORROR!!!!! So I have to go to Penney's and brave the Christmas insanity and go buy stockings and, wait for it, change them in the car. Free show, one and all. All for the sake of a drink with someone who, at the last minute, will likely cancel, just like he has the last...oh, say, four or five times. Now, why am I waiting for his call again?

And, of course, I'll go and buy them and thrash about in the car in an effort to prevent one and all from looking anywhere they probably shouldn't, after standing in line with every teenage girl buying dangling earrings and babydoll underwear (although, with Britney? Is anyone still wearing it?). And then he won't call. Because that's the way life goes.

When you overprepare, overthink and overwork, you usually aren't rewarded for it. Or at least, not in the way you think you're going to be rewarded. You plot and plan, thinking that things are finally going to go your way. You wear the hot skirt and party panties. You bring perfume. You've got the right lipstick, the right shoes and your phone battery is charged. You are ready. And the call doesn't come. It never does, when you think it is going to.

But then, sometimes, you are pleasantly surprised. When you think you've done all that shaving and plucking and painting for nothing and you're sitting on a barstool in your friend's house at midnight, thinking that the title of your autobiography should be "Fucked Again: Tales of an Unfamous American" just like Plant used to say (John, not Robert), someone shows up that you've never met, never expected to meet, and will, in all likelihood, never meet again. But, while it lasts, it certainly is fun and funny and amazing and memorable and he was just so adorable I can't even say so I'm going to shut up right now. And all the plucking and shaving and painting is not always for naught.

It really is just like your mother said. You really should always wear clean underwear. You never know where you might end up and who might end up seeing it. The girl's version of the Boy Scout motto.

I have to go buy stockings now. Pretty ones.