Flaunting Assets

The days that I commute to my office by mass transit, I have to walk the final 2 miles (give or take a few hundred yards) to get to my office. It's not a bad walk, and it's good exercise, so I usually don't mind.* This particular outfit, however, posed a special challenge on the walk. 

*I'm still amazed that I can go almost the entire way from Newark, Delaware, to Herndon, Virgina, by mass transit!

shirt — Cotton Zone (thrifted)

skirt — Forever 21 (Forever 21)

boots — Dansko (Dansko outlet)

Having to deal with the “challenge” I would face on my walk crossed my mind when I was getting dressed, but obviously I didn’t think long enough or hard enough, because I wore the outfit anyway (maybe I was thinking it would give me material for a blog post LOL). Anyway, I probably just got all caught up in how it looked, and threw caution to the wind. You know how it is when you feel good … I got off the bus, and I was smiling and grinning, and generally thought that I was "working it." Honestly? That should have given me the head's up right there that something was going to happen (like what happened here for example).

It looks like two different shirts in these pictures, doesn't it? 

Now I don't mind hoofing it when I have to, but I'm not really a fan of walking for the point of walking … (One day, a car pulled up and asked me if I needed a ride. It was cold and drizzly that day, so I almost climbed into this person's car. At the last minute, my self-preservation kicked in, and said, “No.” The person seemed 100% normal, and I felt pretty silly for declining the ride. But I didn't know this person. Honestly? I felt a whole lot better in retrospect.)

If I can jaywalk or cut through a parking lot, and it saves me some time? I’m game. I look both ways, dodge the cars and then dash across the street so I can cut through the office park, and then through the shopping center and back on the sidewalk. (I'm on my way to work so I'm a woman on a mission. No time to stop and smell the roses and definitely no time to dilly dally).

 

 

So here I am, sashaying down the sidewalk on my way to work, feeling quite on top of the world, and I get to the spot where the town limits change and the sidewalk ends. It's really quite bizarre. You're walking along, and you're walking along, on a very nice sidewalk and then, all of a sudden, the sidewalk cuts out with no warning whatsoever. Instead of walking on this nice wide sidewalk through the middle of suburbia, you're walking on a dirt path (it's only for a hundred feet or so until you get to the corner, because the sidewalk picks up again on the other side of the street, but still ...). And then to add insult to injury or to pour salt in the wound, when you get to the corner, there's a guard rail blocking your way to the other side of the street.

So what does a former jock and now a pretend fashionista do when she encounters a sidewalk that ends with a guard rail barrier?

She climbs over it, of course!

WWYD (What would you do)?

It wasn't like this was a surprise or anything (I mean, I had been doing this trek and climbing over that same guard rail for a few months), but I still didn't expect what happened next. I heard this sound — this horrible, horrible ripping sound. Oh no. Oh no. I didn't even have to make a guess as to what it could be. I knew what it was. It was the sound of my skirt ripping all the way up to my waist. Oh. My. Gawd. What on earth am I going to do now? Really and truly ... what am I going to do?

Well, for one. I kept right on walking. I had a coat that was hiding most of the damage (although I kept trying to figure out how much damage there was). Oh man, that's all I could think of. Instead of strutting down the street as proud as a peacock, I was trudging along trying to figure out how bad it was and thinking, "Why, oh why, did I have to wear a skirt (and a tight skirt) when I knew I was going to be climbing over that guard rail?"! It's just my luck (not)!

Talk about flaunting your assets. 

Snort!