The other day FOAM talked about a time the crotch of her pants ripped while stretching for a rousing round of bowling. That inspired me to tell my pants-ripping story because who doesn’t love a crushingly embarrasing story?

It was the semester I had taken off between transferring colleges. I had returned from working four months at Yellowstone and I was making money as a temp. My current temp position was in the records department of a hospital—they were going through a major filing system change, and it was my job to go down to the records room, load up a cart with patient files, bring them upstairs and unload them for others to relabel. I was really putting my talents to use, huh?

Anyway, one day I’m in the stacks trying to find a particular patient’s file, and I’m wearing these pants that were ollllldd. Like from freshman year of high school. I was poor and I was doing physical work, yet I was expected to dress business causual, so I was forced to haul out every and anything I had that met the criteria. Pants too sizes too small? As long as they’re not denim! So the patient’s file was on the very bottom shelf, and there’s not much room to move in the stacks—they’re the space-saving kind that you have to electronically move to get into. In order to get to the bottom shelf, I was contorting my limbs and stretching those too-small, too-old pants in ways they weren’t meant to be stretched.

Rip!

Right down the front. From near the top of the front-right pocket to half-way down my inner thigh. Clear panty shot, no mistaking. I froze because what the hell else do you do when you suddenly have a hole the size of a child’s head in the front of your pants? You freeze and pray that god will magically transport you from this place.

There wasn’t much I could do. I was a temp who was hardly valued. Leaving work in the middle of the day means someone else has your job tomorrow. I was also young and lame and didn’t realize that others might sympathize with my situation and help me out. I just thought everyone would find me a pathetic, fat pants-ripper. So I took off my cardigan (thank god for cardigans in a crisis!) and wrapped it around the FRONT of my waist. I tried to put it a little off-center, like oh oops look at that. I meant to tie it around my waist like a normal person, but I’m all helter-skelter, working hard at my job and it must have shifted. Oh well, back to file schlepping!

Then I walked around all day using my cart of files as a shield and avoiding eye contact with everyone. Nobody ever said anything to me, which I took to mean that my shifty cardigan was believable. Now I realize it was more likely a food-in-the-teeth situation. Everyone was too embarrassed for me to speak up. Poor girl, look at that gaping hole in her pants. Does she really think that sweater is doing anything to disguise it? Maybe if she wasn’t trying to wear pants that belong to her 12 year old sister she wouldn’t be showing off her bright red underwear.

So classy.

I got home that night and threw those pants away. Today I think I could deal better with such a malfunction, but back then I was so utterly embarrassed. Not only did I get rid of those pants, I threw away all the pants I was holding onto from high school. Die tiny high school pants!