It’s mid-March, and Indian summer’s scorching winds and wildfires have consumed thousands of acres, transforming grassy hillsides into smoking wastelands, killing wildlife, destroying farms, and homesteads. I’m an American ex-pat, beginning my first working day at an advertising agency in Australia; you might expect me to be preoccupied with this frightening life-and-death struggle in my new home, or to be focusing on my new company, co-workers, and clients.
Instead, I am obsessing about my pantyhose. In this 104 degree heat, I am undoubtedly the only woman in all Melbourne foolish enough to wear them. But I have an image to maintain, and I don’t want to blow it, because I worked very hard to secure this international position. I hate spending money on pantyhose, so today I pulled on an old pair I had stashed away before I gained weight.
You know that feeling you get when a pair is too small, the way they bind your waist and give you a sharp stomachache? That’s how I felt this morning, walking to work, wearing this pair that is too small, when they began an odd and unexpected journey: they curled downwards over my waist and edged off my body, rolling themselves up tightly and neatly as they went. This had never happened to me before, and I was wondering whether it had anything to do with being in the southern hemisphere, when the pantyhose suddenly and persistently started pulling my underwear down with them!
Panic stricken, I proceeded to make multiple complex calculations in my head—calculations a gal should never have to make at all, let alone in metric—like determining the centimeters of pantyhose creep per step, the rate of acceleration, the approximate number of steps to the office door, and whether I could rely on the Saddlebag Threshold … would my errant pantyhose stop when they hit it, or would they just keep on going, and if so, what would happen after they passed that rapidly-approaching point of no return—would the rate of acceleration increase dramatically? Would they drop immediately down to my ankles? Or would they slide just below my skirt line and dally defiantly at my knees, hobbling me as I desperately made my way for an alley or doorway where I could hike them up in semi-privacy?
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