Flashpants…or 18 year olds in love do strange things
For a change, and to honor “Funny Friday,” I’m sharing a story about the most embarrassing moment of my life. Enjoy.
I looked down in horror at what lay in the middle of the street. Should I pick it up? Before anyone saw? Or just walk on, ignore it and leave it there? I was frozen, in shock, mortified.
It had been a great date, until then.
I was 18 years old and out for dinner and a movie with my first real boyfriend, Robert. He was 22, a tall, blond, charming college student studying architecture. We’d met on a guided tour of Europe. Those long bus rides through the continent had given us lots of time to talk and get to know each other. We found we had much in common, including love of travel, snow skiing, Star Trek, and putting ice cubes in our milk.
Upon our return home to California, we spent all of our free time together. He took me to the theatre and to baseball games. I took him on horseback rides through the Bay Area hills and baked him blackberry pies. And we both loved the movies.
So on this particular date, the “shock and horror at what lay in the street” date, we went out for pepperoni pizza and to see Flashdance, starring Jennifer Beals. It was 1983, and Beals played a starry-eyed and innocent welder who moonlights as an exotic dancer but dreams of going to ballet school. The character’s determination coupled with her sense of childlike wonder resonated with audiences across the country.
It was a hit, a pop culture phenomenon resulting in girls across the nation cutting the arms off their sweatshirts and donning big scrunchy legwarmers. The movie birthed “What a Feeling,” a huge pop hit for Irene Cara. And the dancing sequences, inspired by the still young MTV, were alive and intense and brimming with passion.
We, all of us in the theater that night, fell in love with Flashdance. We came out of the bustling movie theater all lightness and bounce, the magic of the film still upon us. Robert and I glowed with joy for the realized dreams of the Jennifer Beals character and with hope for our future as a couple.
I felt joyful and light on my feet, like a dancer, as we walked across the crowded sidewalk and stepped down off the curb. When my leather Reebok high top hit the street, however, I felt a bit of a tickling sensation along the back of my right knee. Like something was in my pants. I ignored it, though, as Robert took my hand, weaving his fingers in between mine, and with dozens of people around us we began to cross the street.
It happened when we reached the center of the road. More than a tickle, something was pressing on my leg, working its way slowly down my calf and out my jeans. I looked down at my feet, and there, next to my shoe, was a pair of white underpants. My underpants. Lying. In. The. Street.
Let me explain, lest you think there was something illicit about my underwear falling out of my pants in a crowded street next to a movie theater.
I was 18, I still lived at home, I was a slob, and I was in love. The night before, I had returned home late from yes! another date with Robert. I’d been exhausted, and just before I jumped into bed, I’d unzipped my stonewashed jeans and shoved them, and my underpants, down my legs into two wrinkled circles on the floor.
The next night when it was almost time for Robert to arrive, I’d jumped into the same pair of pants scrunched up on the floor and yanked them up. I never realized that my underwear from the night before nestled in the right leg of my pants, resting just atop my calf.
Back in the street, holding hands with a now rather bewildered Robert, we stared solemnly down at the underpants spread out in the road for all to see, my heart now body slamming my ribs. In a split second I ran through my options. Should I pick them up and shove them into my pocket? I looked around and saw faces. Too many people were watching. With great curiosity. Should I kick them into the gutter? Too far. Would require about ten good kicks. Plus they were white and showed up too well, smugly gleaming against the black asphalt. Or, should I just leave them? Lying there in the street? Ahhh, yes.
I pulled hard against Robert’s hand and we walked on. I was a grown-up, leaving the messiness of childhood behind.
As we hustled back to the car, I remembered back to some of the mornings when my sister and I walked to school. The street where we lived was on the edge of town and before our house was built, had been something of a destination for couples who wanted to spend some serious, late-at-night-in-the-car-together time. There were mornings when we walked slowly along the street, minds racing as we stared at the different things discarded in the road. Lipstick. McDonald’s bag. Beer bottle. Condom.
Now I had made my own donation to the asphalt museum of American culture, albeit involuntarily.
So as you motor along the roadways of this fine country, and perhaps occasionally spot illicit objects or abandoned articles of clothing lying in the street, do not always think the worst, my friends. Eighteen year-olds in love do strange things.
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Susy Flory is the author of So Long Status Quo: What I Learned From Women Who Changed the World (Beacon Hill). She wrote a book about being a strong woman; now, with a recent diagnosis of breast cancer, she has to live it.
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SUSY FLORY is a writer, speaker, and journalist who inspires and challenges women to embrace a life of passion, boldness, & adventure. In your own unique way, YOU can change the world, starting in your own backyard. 
You are too funny!! I’m wondering how long it was before you were comfortable talking to Robert about the “incident!”
Susy you make me laugh. Your candor and insight in this blog and others is delightful. Keep on writing.
This was so well written and so darn funny, I was laughing out loud!
Oh you are too funny! When did you tell Robert the whole story?
Well, I couldn’t keep it a secret because I nearly ripped his arm off in my panic….but he didn’t understand what had happened until we got in the car (I made him walk really fast) and I explained it to him. And….he still married me!