Suspiro — Tale of Mortification

Mortification is the word of the day.

My day had been planned out with a chart and every­thing. Super Academia.

and then I got dis­tracted. I missed the last of my buses, so I took the car and drove around cam­pus try­ing to find metered park­ing (I don’t have a park­ing pass… not until January). I found metered park­ing across cam­pus. Normally, not a prob­lem. Today, two problems:

1) No bike.

2) The cats have hid­den my shoes, and I had to run over to my apart­ment to find shoes… the only pair I found were some of my three inch heels. I love them, all of them, but they’re idi­otic shoes.

So, I’m hik­ing across cam­pus in these ridicu­lous shoes, car­ry­ing my thirty pound mes­sen­ger bag across my chest, and not wear­ing a coat. The coat is impor­tant when wear­ing a but­ton down shirt and car­ry­ing a mes­sen­ger bag. The coat pro­tects the buttons.

I walked into my class­room thirty min­utes late. I sat and got ori­ented. A few min­utes into the dis­cus­sion, I notice my pro­fes­sor glance at my chest. Chest glanc­ing isn’t entirely unusual, after all, and I’ve cer­tainly had moments where my eyes are not obey­ing my brain and sense of pro­pri­ety… and this is my Mr. Rogers prof that I’m cer­tain didn’t mean any­thing by it, so I don’t hold it against him. I do, how­ever, sub­tly pull the lapels closer together.

About five min­utes later, I stretch my shoul­ders and I see my shirt pucker oddly.

Yes. Indeed. The strap of my bag had unbut­toned a but­ton on my shirt. Worse, it unbut­toned the ONE but­ton that would dis­play my bra.

That’s bad enough, right, flash­ing a prof? Wait.

Part of my dis­trac­tion this morn­ing was that I had for­got­ten to do laun­dry yes­ter­day, and I was lack­ing clean clothes. I scrounged up most of it, but had picked up a bra from the apart­ment while I was there. ‘Twas clean because I don’t often wear it. Threw it on and left.

Yes. Indeed. I flashed peachy-fleshtoned lace.

Mortification is the word of the day.