Logos

Since the real news is too disturbing for me to write about, I have decided to write stories instead, funny stories.  So here’s one I recently recalled. And as always, this is a “true” story, only I will omit names or identifying details in order to protect the guilty and the innocent.

Several years ago I went out to dine at the Golden Corral with a group of ladies.  We picked our table and then we all lined up at the troths to fill our plates for our first go-round.  Once we were seated we realized that our table was situated near the main buffet and so some of us had a good view of the line of humanity that moved slowly along the buffet, piling macaroni and cheese, limp green beans, pasty mashed potatoes, slabs of salty ham, and much more on their plates.  We chatted and gossiped as we ate, but at some point in the meal, the lady sitting at my right, S. nudged me, motioning with her head for me to look at the woman in the powder blue polyester pant suit who was hovering over the fried chicken and beef tips.  I looked, but saw nothing unusual.  “What?” I quietly asked her.  She hissed, “Look at the bottom of her pants.  What is that hanging out there?” So I did as she said, and I saw it.  A white something peeking out of the opening of the powder blue left pants’ leg.  I laughed just a little, and then replied, “I don’t know what it is.”  Now we were hooked and could not stop watching.  We followed with our eyes as Powder-Blue Pants progressed along the buffet line.  The white thingy inched out further.  Soon it was dragging on the dirty floor. M, who was sitting on the other side of S, joined us. We tried not to be too obvious, but it was beginning to be very funny.  The ladies who sat across from us, whose backs were to the buffet, could not see what we were laughing at and so we told them to turn and look, but “don’t let on that you are staring”.  When Powder-Blue Pants moved on to the next table at the buffet, she left behind the white thingy. Now we could see what it was. She had just dropped her big white old lady bloomers on the floor.  Like a baby losing a turd from its diaper. But the most amazing thing was that she seemed oblivious to what had just transpired in public for all to see.  Our ability to contain our guffaws was now gone.  So those of us who knew what had taken place turned and looked at one another and began to laugh out loud, pretending that one of us had just told a funny story.   The others in our group soon learned about the incident and people at other tables began to openly gawk at the bloomers on the floor.  The scene grew in hilarity as new persons came along the buffet line and stepped on or stepped over the bloomers. One man actually got the bloomers stuck to his shoe and drug them a few steps before he shook them off his foot.

I’m not sure if Powder-Blue Pants knew that she lost her bloomers and was pretending they were not hers, or if she was truly clueless.  Either way, the bloomers stayed on the floor. No one was making an effort to retrieve them. Especially the new comers to the buffet line at the Golden Corral.

So we resumed our meal, snickering and checking on the status of the bloomers after every few bites.  By the time we were getting out of  our chairs to approach the dessert buffet line,  we spied one of the waiters, a young guy who was probably the lowest on the totem pole and who was told to  go out and get the bloomers off the floor. He came with a broom and a stand-up dust pan. He gingerly swept the now dirty white bloomers into the pan and hurried away.  The show was over.

Of course we talked incessantly for weeks to come about the lady who lost her bloomers at the Golden Corral.  And we decided that she was not trying to shed a dirty pair of bloomers, but the bloomers actually had hitched  a ride inside the powder blue pants while they were in the dryer together, working up a magnetic attraction, via static electricity, that was simply irresistible.