And you think YOU'RE having a bad day...

I was having lunch the other day with some girlfriends, one of whom was having a terrible morning - so over a bottle of wine we were trying to make her feel better and send her back to work fortified with both our support and a wee bit of the grape. After she had gone through her list of grievances, one of the girls turned to me and said "You should tell her about the time your bared your ass at Pottery Barn...she'll totally feel better!"

And so I did...and SHE did...feel better, that is.

I was encouraged to "blog" about the subject...apparently my missteps give everyone a shot of self-confidence. For those of you that stumble across it, enjoy, and know that your day could always be worse...behold:

So one afternoon, ages ago, I was at work in Palo Alto, ending my day and preparing to go out to dinner with the guy I was dating at the time. We were celebrating something (I don't recall what) but I was wearing something uncharacteristically chic: a long black skirt and four inch heels. I had been teetering around all day hoping that my discomfort would have the desired effect on my date later.

On my way out the door, I realized that I had forgotten his gift (it must have been a birthday) and went into something of a panic...I had only an hour to purchase a replacement and make it to the restaurant. I believe the original gift had been a flask, purchased at Pottery Barn. Stanford mall was right across the way, so I scurried over, hoping to find the same flask and make it back to the restaurant in time.

Pottery Barn had recently undergone some dramatic renovations. It had not only moved into a bigger space, but become a two story store, the staircase curving grandly upwards, enclosed in a glass banister. Neat! Customers going up and down had a full view of the store above and below and cashiers on the ground floor had a perfect visual on shoppers comings and goings.

I minced upstairs (my heels not allowing much speed) and after a bit of wandering located the flask (same one! yay!) and made
my way to the stairwell. I immediately noticed that heading back down was going to present a problem. My long skirt kept catching on my heel and so I continuously had to kick it out of the way with each step.

About half way down, my cell phone started ringing in my purse. Thinking it was my date, I started digging around for it, simultaneously picking up speed as I thought perhaps he was already at the restaurant, waiting. And so here I was, holding a flask in one hand, digging through my purse (twisting my body to do so) with the other and breaking into a trot all at once. It was the perfect storm.

In one step I managed to drop the flask which noisily made its way down the rest of the MARBLE stairs (making everyone at the cashier bank look up at me...did I mention there was a SALE and so there were about 15 people waiting to be checked out?), breathlessly answered the phone "HELLO? I'M ON MY WAY!" AND stepped into the hem of my skirt, pulling it right down around my ankles in one, sickening WHOOSH.

And on this day, I was wearing a thong.

And, it was my mother on the phone.

And I was stuck in my skirt. Nope. Couldn't pull it up...for about 30 agonizing seconds.

I abandoned the phone completely, hearing only my mothers "Jen? Are you there?", and grasped at my stupid skirt which had wound its way around my heel. To do so, I had to bend over and heard my bare butt smack against the glass banister...of course on the side that was facing the cashiers. The comment of "Awesome!" I believe, was made, by some casual observer below. Once bent over, I nearly lost my balance, and not wanting to follow the flask down the stairs, I pressed further into the glass...sweet God I don't even want to know what that view looked like.

Humiliated, I managed to disentangle myself from the offending garment hoist it up HIGH and fled, red faced, from the store, not before seeing some guy in line give me the thumbs up signal. Everyone else just looked horror struck.

In short, my date didn't get his gift. Instead, he got to have dinner with a very mortified me. The funny thing being that years later, I was out to dinner with friends and this girl started a conversation with "I was talking to a friend the other day who was telling this story about how she knew someone who pants'ed herself at Pottery Barn..."

Yep...that was me.