Maybe I’m channeling an inner Lady Gaga, but lately I’ve been forgetting pants. No, really. Like forgetting them completely. How do I manage to pack my work bag or travel bag and forget to check if I’ve packed the very item needed to cover the bottom half of my body?!

Yes, it’s happened before, but this last time was the most ridiculous. As in, how-in-the-world-did-you-forget-to-pack-pants kind of way. Or in a, why-am-I-not-surprised epiphany. Better yet, just-go-on-stage-in-your-bathing-suit-bottoms-and-say-Lady-Gaga-inspired-me excuse no one wants to hear as they’re about to teach FOUR studies.

Oh yeah, did I not mention I was speaking at a weekend retreat THREE hours from home? In a desert? In traffic? Yeah, I should mention that because my options were limited. And by limited I mean I my GPS app on my phone put the closest store I recognized almost 20 miles away.

I drove around aimlessly and found a store closing in fourteen minutes. I know it was fourteen minutes because the patient teen cocked out her hip and told me I only had fourteen minutes before she locked the door as I entered the store. It was a scene out of a movie as I ran to the women’s section and rummaged through clothes trying to find something that would:

1. Match with my top
2. Be within my Matt-instituted budget
3. Value modesty [because honestly, Christian women are the worst critics and purveyors of immodesty]

Fail.

I rushed into my retreat center room and put on my outfit. Something was wrong. The pants fit odd. The hem was too short. The color was off. I immediately called for backup. My mother said it looked great. Jasmine, on the other hand, reminded me that mother had cancer in her eyes and was banned from giving fashion advice because she obviously couldn’t tell that I looked like a reject from the 1995 Salina movie. The pants formed around my pseudo hips [they aren’t hips more than they are odd bulges of mass I inherited—but not fully acquired—from my Puerto Rican mother], didn’t cover my heels, and just looked awful.

My future speaking outfit

The night was semi-saved by my sweet friend, blog reader, and retreat attendee, Kati. She brought me a retreat shirt, lent me her sandals, and her sister took her sweater off and let me wear it for the night. I slapped on some jewelry and tied the cheap faux-leather belt around my sweater to call it a night.

If you see me teaching in flat shoes EVER again, know they were probably borrowed and I somehow forgot to pack my pants. Again. That or Lady Gaga really inspired me to challenge conventional modesty. Kidding! Okay, half kidding.