Whenever I get smug thinking of myself as a very grounded person with a lack of vanity because I haven't resorted to turtlenecks to cover my wrinkly neck, a memory comes trickling back, up through the hourglass that has already dispersed the sands of time.
That is when I remember Moscow and the crappy pants. (I must apologize for my public use of the word "crappy" because my mother raised me better than this. She also taught us all not to say the "f" word which of course is fart. Sorry Mom. I promise that I will never use the "f" word in a blog title.)
Two years ago we took a trip to Russia with my daughter and son-in-law, who had served there on his LDS mission.
We arrived in Moscow early in the morning after
We set out for the enormous Izmailovsky outdoor flea market where you can purchase matryoshka nesting dolls of anything from United States football teams to Russian czars, chess sets, enormous knives and WWII German helmets.
I saw myself reflected in a mirror and thought to myself, "Wow, those pants don't look as good as I thought". This is when I discovered the chilling truth. My cute pants were 6000 miles away and I had packed my crappy pants, the crappy pants that were meant to go in the donation pile to be recycled and sold to fulfill the life long dream of some other woman who was willing, as I had been, to wear crappy pants.
The rest of my day in Moscow I was totally preoccupied with thoughts like these.
Hey you... old guy selling chess sets, don't look at these crappy pants!
They are not reflective of American style!
Hey you...6' 6" beautiful Russian woman!
Just because American tourists don't wear stilettos to the flea market
doesn't mean they always wear crappy pants!
I mourned my egregious packing mistake during the entire two days we spent in Moscow, even after I changed out of the crappy pants
My vanity. Both crime and punishment
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