Travel Blooper Friday: (Ano)the(r) Great Underwear Debacle
It’s Friday, which means its time to stop talking weddings and start talking travel bloopers. Here’s one from high school, and like last week’s (in which I managed to scandalize nearly half a dozen British undergrads) it has a little something to do with wardrobe malfunctions… namely underwear. I’m sensing a theme here.
Washington DC, circa 2001: I was performing in a talent show as a proud of member of the Monmouth County 4-H Delegation, selected to represent our little corner of New Jersey at the annual Citizenship Washington Focus trip.
I was there with my high school BFFs, Emily and Jillian, and we spent a week meeting with our local representatives, touring the sites and participating in various educational programs designed to turn us all into active participants in the great democratic experiment.
At the end of the week there was a talent show and I brought my tap shoes and a navy dress purchased at a thrift shop a few weeks prior. It was the perfect dress for tap dancing: sparkly and swirly, but when I put it on, I realized you could see my panty line so I did what all good dancers do: I took my underwear off and pulled my standard issue Capezio suntan tights back into place.
(By the way, this is not weird. Dancers do this ALL the time. The only dancers who wear underwear are little kids in pre-ballet classes and its only because their mother’s don’t know any better.)
I was up on stage, doing a series of turns, when the crowd starting going wild. And, even though I always have every intent of choreographing my solos before I get onstage, I never get around to it so I was making it up as I went. If the crowd loved turns, I would give them more turns.
It was not until I got offstage stage that I realized why.
Moral of the Story? If you’re going to wear a new dress onstage in front of a few hundred teenagers, read up on the effects of centrifugal force beforehand. Or, wear trunks.
Fieldwork in Stilettos 
One Response to “Travel Blooper Friday: (Ano)the(r) Great Underwear Debacle”
Oh, gosh, I remember this…but you were quite a trooper about it from what I’ve heard.