Why Some Things Just Disappear – The Case of the Disappearing Skirt

Summer’s heat and humidity? NO THANK YOU! I hate heat and humidity! You will never find me, even if I make it to 95, living in Florida. I’d rather move to Alaska. Nothing feels as uncomfortable to me as sweat dripping down my entire body in the time it takes me to walk from my back door to my car, especially after I’ve just showered. 

When the weather is unbearably hot, I wear as little as possible – no sleeves and EXTREMELY lightweight clothing. 

I may, however, have to change my attitude and my attire. 

One day during one of the Midwest’s staggering heat waves, I wore a no-sleeved silk blouse and a breezy lightweight skirt because I knew I had to leave my house – I would be seeing a movie with a friend and meeting her for lunch at a local restaurant. 

The hardwood benches the restaurant provided were probably deliberately put there in an effort to get patrons out of there as quickly as possible, but because the food was so good, we always suffered through the uncomfortable seats.

On this particular day, a neighbor who more or less stalked me sat across the aisle from us with his mother just as we were finishing our meal.

Let me interrupt my story to explain the stalker to you. He was one of those “different” types of people who roamed the neighborhood talking to himself and paced back and forth in front of people’s homes talking to what we all thought was some sort of imaginary friend.

One day as I was sitting on the couch in my living room, I felt a presence around me. When I looked up, I saw Karl staring at me from my living room window. I ran to the door, opened it, confronted him, and screamed at him to get off my property. Yes, I can be viscous.

From that day on he stood on the street in front of my home staring into windows of bedrooms that belonged to my son on one side and my daughters on the other. I promptly closed all the drapes.

Then, when I thought everything was going to be OK, a neighbor who knew he was stalking me told me that Karl had told her he was particularly fond of my white bikini. Through squinted eyes and with scowling mouth, I told her, “I don’t have a white bikini.”

I walked around the outside of my home peeking into windows with drapes shut to see if cracks of light showed through and quickly made adjustments.

So you can imagine my disgust at having to sit next to my stalker in a restaurant. I told Clare we needed to leave – NOW. With my back to Karl and his mother I leaned over my table to grab my purse and keys from my seat. I then politely said hi to him and his mother (who returned my hi with a glare), paid my bill, and walked outside, relieved to be away from him, but wondering why his mother glared at me with such revulsion. I wanted to let her know that it was HER son who kept staring into MY home, and that if she were to be upset with anyone, it should be with him, NOT ME, but I let it go – better to be away from him than to be in his presence.

As we entered the parking lot, I felt a little more breeze on my legs than I would have anticipated. I thought maybe my skirt had somehow become clumped up or that it had blown up to my back. No. That wasn’t it. The entire back of my skirt was gone. Completely gone – from just above my panty line and on both sides of my panties all the way down to the bottom of where the skirt should have been.

Either I sat in something sticky that completely ripped off my skirt at the theater, or Karl cut it while I was bending over to retrieve my purse and keys. Somebody in some theater somewhere is laughing at the joke he played on me or Karl is holding onto a memento of mine.