Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we will never cease to be amused...OR... why I hate wearing skirts

Last night James and I went out to celebrate a friend's birthday. I felt like dressing outside of my usual clothing routine and wore a skirt. I don't usually wear skirts. Quite rarely, actually. I like casual ones, like the one I wore last night. As other full thigh ladies can appreciate, the challenge in wearing a skirt/dress lays in maintaining comfort with leg friction of said thighs. There are different solutions for this, one being wearing bike shorts like leggings or shorts under said skirt. In the past I have worn actual bike shorts under skirts or dresses. Last night I graduated to a thinner, flesh toned one that was actually made of a material that breathes well under other garments. I also decided to wear a pair of sandals that have more of a platform base and are a bit higher than what I usually wear.

It was a fun evening at Kings Bowling near the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. Around 11:30pm, we headed home with our friend Seth who lives near us in Arlington. We took the green line to the red line, and took the red line to Harvard, planning to grab the 77 bus home. For those of you who are not familiar with the Harvard T station, the bus landings are on the ground floor and then one floor above that, to the right of the subway entrances (when exiting the subway areas). There are windows on the upper level, allowing you to see the bus landing for bus #77. So, the layout is such that as you come out of the subway area, if you look up to the right, you can see if your bus is there. Or, as the more highly trained public transport commuters (like Seth and me) do, you can look up through the window and watch the movements of the people there to gauge the proximity of the bus. If they are not shifting to get up- you have time. If they are moving to get up and congregating to the right- it's time to book it.
Last night, as we walked through the automated turnstiles, we looked up and saw people picking up bags and moving to the right. We all started to run, across the station and up the ramp to the upper level. Being the owner of the longest legs of the three of us, Seth ran ahead of us and had the best chance of getting there first and telling the driver to hold up a moment. James ran right after him. I was running too, but to my dismay was not my usual 'running to bus' fast due to the sandals. They were made for strolling, not so much for running. I did what I could to prevent myself from sliding in the sandals and kept going. At one point, I happened to look down to see how the sandals were doing and realized with shock that my skirt had fallen down was almost down to my knees. Did I mention that my thigh preserving short shorts were flesh toned? Yeah. I grabbed the waist of the skirt now dangerously close to my calves, hiked it up to somewhere above my belly button, leaving my dignity somewhere on that ramp, and kept running. Thankfully, we caught the bus. I spent most of the bus ride shaking my head in disbelief that that had just happened.

In hindsight, I realize there were a couple of reasons for this incident. I bought this particular skirt last summer. Since then I've lost some weight, over 20 lbs and, well, I think it was too big on me. I was reminded at one point this morning while writing this out, of that Weight Watchers TV commercial a while back- a woman is running to catch the elevator and her skirt slides down tripping her into full slide fall on the floor. The tag line was something like, make sure to remember to buy new clothes when losing weight. So I guess it could have been worse. Also, because I was wearing the shorts, I didn't feel the fabric of the skirt start to slip. As ridiculous as that experience was last night, I'm just glad I saw it when I did. Not sure I how I would've handled tripping on my own skirt in the middle of the Harvard Square T station. No that's not true, I know exactly what I would've done- I would've gotten up, curtsied, grabbed the skirt and kept running.

Clearly, my dignity has been dinged, but only slightly. I was more amused than anything else and have, of course, learned from the experience. So the lesson of the day- When running through a T station in a skirt at least one size too big and flesh toned undershorts, never... no, always, grab the waist of the skirt, just in case:)