Wardrobe malfunction of the intimate kind - now I understand the term "travelling pants".

This post is about underwear.  My underwear.  Specifically, my underpants,  knickers, undies, panties, grundies, pantaloons, bloomers - whatever name you prefer to give them.

I had a very unhappy relationship with them today.  Not for the whole day.  The bad behaviour specifically commenced as I arrived at the train station.  To be clear, the problems started when I was just far enough from home to make turning back and throwing the evil creatures (should that be plural or singular?) on the fire.  I don't actually have a fire to throw them on.  It would be a metaphorical fire - probably just the bin, but I would have flames of anger in my eyes as I put them there.  Alternatively they would have gone in the laundry basket, eventually been washed, and then made their way back to my underwear drawer.  From this drawer I would pull them out again in a few weeks' time and stare at them with narrowed eyes, trying to remember whether this was the badly behaved pair, or just another pair that looks like any other pair.  My memory would fail and I would put them on.

This is clearly what happened this morning.  I'm fairly certain that I've spent at least one day before doing battle with my under garments.

The morning started like any other - I woke up to the alarm, headed straight for the shower, put my pyjamas back on to eat breakfast, do my teeth, hair and makeup, before finally putting my clothes on.  Now the underpants in question looked normal in the beginning.  Even after I put them on and walked around the house, everything was fine.  There was NO SIGN of what was to come.  Kind of like a relationship where everyone's on their best behaviour in the beginning and it's all down hill from there.

Just as I reached the train station and began walking up the steps to the pedestrian overpass, the waistband started to roll.  I learned today that a rolling pantie waistband is like a snowball - it gathers momentum and there's little that can be done about it.  This was a fairly dangerous position to be in, considering the rest of my outfit comprised of a dress.  If the snowball reached the bottom of the mountain, so to speak, the potential for surprise was great.

I took the opportunity of what I characterised as the relative privacy of the pedestrian overpass to readjust.  I like to call this manoeuvre "hoiking".  For example: "Taking cover between the galvanised fencing of the pedestrian overpass, I hoiked my underpants up, once and for all."  The last part of this sentence is just wishful thinking.  I spent the day hoiking.  It was disconcerting.  And not just for me.  I should also confirm that the privacy of the pedestrian overpass is relative to thinking that when you're driving your car and picking your nose, no one can see you.

By the time I arrived at my place of work for the day, I was fairly certain that I hadn't read the instructions properly and had somehow put them on upside down.  The other possibility was that they were haunted.  I don't even want to contemplate that.

As a result of my problem, I was extremely efficient.  I spent the day glued to my desk chair and achieved quite a bit.  The only time I left my desk was for the three hour Christmas lunch function we had today.  I quickly found a chair at a table and was not going to move.  Until I discovered the Kris Kringle routine and realised that it would involve me walking to the Christmas tree in front of fifty of my new colleagues, while my underpants continued their practical joke.  I seriously contemplated removing them all together, but the combination of wearing a white dress and the presence of nuns suggested that this was not a solution.

I devised a better one.  I would grip my waist with my forearms and just hold everything up and together.  This meant it was extremely difficult to collect a gift from under the tree, but because I'm new, I think everyone was beating themselves up about not noticing the weird arm disability that I have.  Everyone was too polite to say anything.  I hope prayers are being said in the name of my healing.

I planned to rip these traitorous knickers off as soon as I arrived home, but the phone rang and I was distracted.  I'm STILL WEARING THEM.  Some hours later.  They seem to only misbehave when I go out.  Oh and the cut is totally misnamed.  On the label it says "hipsters". In my book, that means they're meant to wrap around the hips, not the knees - or worse, the ankles!  I'm pretty sure "anklets" are socks and I've never HEARD of "kneesters".  Although they sound more hip than they should.  Perhaps I should market them for the hipsters to wear with their drop crotch jeans.

And I can't believe there was a film called "The sisterhood of the travelling pants".  Who would make a movie about this?