Excerpt from my childhood: Part 1

I have learned many things in my lifetime. I have learned to always turn on the light before sitting down on the toilet in the middle of the night. I have learned that, unless you like melted, it's better to eat ice cream out of a plastic bowl, it helps slow the melting process. I know that too much sugar can give me a stomachache, that I really like the color brown, and that 40 is still really very young.

Something else that I have learned is that it is never a good idea to try and put on a pair of pants while wearing shoes.

I first tried this when I was 7 years old. This was back in the 80's, when all pants had tapered legs and it was sometimes hard to just get your own foot through the ankle opening, much less an entire shoe. But, of course, when you are 7 and the world is just passing you by, why would you want to waste time taking your shoes off before putting on pants? One might ask why I was wearing shoes without pants. That is totally beside the point.

Those sneaky pants. They fooled me by allowing me to get most of my foot through until I was close enough to the bottom to think, "Yes, this is totally going to work! I don't have to take the time to take off my shoe...I'll just shove my foot right through..." And that's when it caught me. Yes, then came the point when my shoe would not budge. There might have been even be a little more pushing and shoving, further securing my shoe in its new home, before I realized that this was definitely not a good idea.

The struggle that ensued could win awards. It should be as easy as a simple tug the other direction, but no. When the shoe was not easily released from its captor, pure panic set in. It's like getting locked in a closet with nobody around to hear you cry for help. Except I didn't want to cry for help because I didn't want anyone to see me with my pants, literally, around my ankles. The ripping, pulling, tugging, and clawing, customary to what you would see in manic moods, was, I am sure, a sight to behold. I was positive someone was going to find me hours later this way and that they would have to cut the pants and shoe from my body. Panic, panic, panic, calm down, take a deep breath, it wasn't that hard to get in, therefore it can't be that hard to get out. Let's try again, tug...tug, tug...TUG, panic, panic, panic. This went on well beyond what it should have, probably only minutes but what felt like hours.

From the many lessons I have learned, one thing I know for sure. It's not a good idea to put pants on while wearing shoes. I would like to be able to say that I am a learned-my-lesson-after-one-time kind of girl. But then I would not be telling you the truth. Oh no, I am a well-let's-just-see-if-it-will-work-this-way kind of girl. Of course, I had to see if it would work with my boots and snow pants. When pants got a little wider at the bottom, surely it would work then. The same goes for trying to take your pants off while wearing shoes. Just don't try it. It's not a good idea. Instead of saving a little time by not removing the shoes first, you will waste enormous amounts of time, energy, and sanity. We all know nobody has enough of those these days.