Jesus Christ on a Cracker I Hate Those Pants

Meeting with a recruiter and a client tomorrow. The last thing the recruiter said to me on the phone was, "And remember to dress properly," so I felt compelled to drive out into the winter night to look for something proper to wear. I have one skirt that is presentable for job interview. It looks like a nun's skirt especially when I wear it with the thick ribbed grey tights and black shoes. All I need is some sort of headgear and a ruler. So I went to Lord and Taylor's instead of the usual you takes your chances discount stores that I like.

You know how in department stores they sort of cluster together little collections of separates or "looks." It seemed to me that every single cluster, every single rack where I went to look for a skirt, had instead these wretched I don't even know what you call them, they come halfway down to your calf. pants. I would reach for something that looked like a long nice tweedy skirt and it would turn out to be another pair of these wretched pants, mocking me. After about 20 minutes I was in a terrible temper. I raised my eyes to heaven and actually said out loud, "Jesus Christ I hate these fucking pants."

When I get into a fever of irritation like this some friend always feels compelled to tell me something reasonable. Well, just don't bother. I hate these pants and I don't want to be talked out of it. Tight in the thighs and then wide at the calf, as if you wanted your ass to look big and your calves to look skinny and forlorn, as if you wanted your feet to look as if they really ought to be attached to some other person. I think you might look all right in them if you are six foot two and weigh about 110 pounds. And if you were on the beach digging clams.

The blouses and sweaters did nothing to improve my temper.

I found two skirts that were just tolerable. One of them was this tweedy flared one that looked like, well, another nun's skirt. The other was this black stretchy thing. I bought that. I figure I have a couple more years in which I can actually show off my behind in a tight skirt and might as well make the best of it. Plus it was comfortable. I grumbled at the very friendly sales clerk. "Why do you have so many of those awful pants? I hate those pants. Not exactly flying off the racks, are they? Why? Because they're ugly, that's why. Does anybody actually wear them? Have you ever seen anybody wear them? You realize that there are maybe two people on the whole planet who look decent wearing those pants, right?" Well, he didn't speak much English.

So then I got lost trying to find my way out of the store because by then I had forgotten that I was down one floor from where I had parked. I went around and around and wandered into a whole other section of women's clothes -- the "non-clamdigger, non-skankwear" section -- and found several skirts that would have done just fine. But then I couldn't really justify spending any more money, so I said to myself, "Kill them at the interview then come back and buy something else."
And luckily I remembered that I had come down the escalator. So as I was riding it back up, I looked out and didn't see any of the part of the store where I had been. Had I just gone into some horrible sort of opposite-retail parallel universe or what? I saw a sign that said "Petites." It looked vaguely familiar. Was that where I was? Suppose I had bought something petite! That began to worry me: I don't know why, as I had tried the skirt on and it had fit. Nevertheless I was beset by the worry that I might have been shopping in the Petite section without knowing it. But then I remembered that all the tweedy skirts except the one I tried on were all like size 16 and size 18, so maybe they weren't Petite. So that was a relief.