1. Over time, the couch has sagged and reformed itself to your shape with sunken-in spots for your head, arms, and bottom.

2. You’ve been slowly rearranging your house so that you can reach everything from the couch. Remote? Check. Phone? Check. Magazines? Check. Fuzzy blanket? Check. Now you’re researching how much it would cost to install a bathroom nearby.

3. You pick out your clothes in the morning based on how comfortable they will feel while you’re reclining.

4. Your family and friends know to never ever sit in your special spot.

5. Your normally grubby teenage son feels compelled to Febreeze the cushions every few days before he sits down.

The comfy couch idea, used as a metaphor in So Long Status Quo for the comfortable cocoon our lives can become if we are not careful, was inspired by bestselling author Haven Kimmel in her wonderful book, She Got Up Off the Couch. Kimmel is one of my favorite writers. If you’ve never read her, start with A Girl Named Zippy. It’s one of the funniest and most original books I’ve ever read.

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.

* * * * * * * *

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.

I loved my comfy couch, and my safe life, for a long time. But at some point it became like a trap, like a safe warm cocoon that I couldn’t break out of.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you longed for summer vacation? During those long hot days of school just before break you dream about summer and can’t wait for school to be over so you can sleep in, play with friends, relax, and enjoy yourself. Then summer comes, and it’s wonderful, and you get to do those things you were dreaming about, but after a while it goes on too long.

You get bored, and there isn’t much of a routine or purpose to your days, and all of a sudden you can’t wait for school to start again. Do you remember that feeling? That was my safe-on-the-couch life. I yearned for something more. I was ready for an adventure.

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged regularly. I used to be over on Typepad, with a blog called Unmasking the Goddess: A Christ Follower Looks Into Goddess Spirituality. I blogged actively for a couple of years, and met some amazing people along the way. Now it’s time to get back to blogging. This time, I’ll be writing about amazing women who changed the world, both past and present.

I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I was in school I didn’t get to study much in the way of women’s history. But now’s my chance to get to know these women, and I’m going for it. And you’re invited to join me.

And if you have any suggestions for women who changed the world, or women changing the world, I’d love to hear them.