It was our Canadian Thanksgiving Monday. I had been fighting a cold and had a very busy week, so I decided it was probably best to stay home instead of attend our relatives’ Thanksgiving dinner. I was snuggled up in my P.J.s most of the day. I finally decided to have a shower around 4:00 p.m. and thought that it was finally time I got dressed. Still wanting to be comfortable, I went for a tank top, zippered long sweater, and some leggings.
Michael loves Christmas. He happened to be humming a Christmas carol earlier in the day, so I thought it would be funny to put on my black leggings that had Christmas balls printed all over them, even though it was Thanksgiving. I threw some big, red, wooly stockings on overtop and was set!
We had talked that morning about going to vote for the federal election. It was the last day for the early voting. The voting station closed at 9:00 p.m., so we thought we would go if Michael got back in time from the party. By the time I had changed in the afternoon, the voting had slipped my mind.
Michael got home around 8:15 p.m. or so. We were hanging out in the kitchen talking about how the party went, when it donned on me that we had to go and vote. By this point, we had a half an hour left before it was going to close. I panicked and said I had to change my clothes…again! Michael said I was fine and let’s just go. I laughed, panicked, and decided I would do as he said. To make it even worse, I quickly grabbed some brown and black hiking boots on that I had by the door and ran out. I looked like I had just rolled out of bed. I had no make-up on, my hair was a frizzy poufy mess, and my outfit was … something to behold! As I walked out the door, I assured myself that I probably wouldn’t know anyone at the polls anyway.
I was wrong! We pulled into the mall parking lot to see a couple from the school I worked at walking towards the mall doors. The wife is a cosmetologist. She is beautiful and the couple is always very nicely dressed. Here we are, pulling up in the “Shred It Mobile” (our company vehicle), and I cringed! My husband was thoroughly amused as I slowly started to incline my seat. He was kind enough to park a fair distance away from their vehicle. Thankfully it was dark outside. I told him I was going to wait until they came back out to the car. I was grateful that we still had 15-20 minutes left before the polls closed by the time they came out.
I waited for them to get in their vehicle. I got out of our car and followed the areas in the parking lot that had the least amount of light. I thought at that point that I was safe.
Thankfully there weren’t any voters in the room at the time, but as we walked up to place our vote, Michael looked at the volunteer and said, “hello Mr. Bradley”. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me! I may not have grown up in this city, but Michael sure did! I was grateful that the ballot box was in the way of Mr. Bradley and me, so he wasn’t able to see my waist down. I could hear people talking and laughing in the background. As I stood there, all I could think about is that they were probably laughing at me.
I quickly went to the confidential voting booth. In a panic, I scanned the card, found the name I wanted to vote for, put the X in the box and quickly returned to put in my ballot. All the while, the only thing I could think about was my silly leggings!
Michael took his time to vote, returned the ballot, and we began to, what felt like, slowly exit the room. As we were about to leave, Michael looked to his right, and said, “hello Mr. Wookey”. Oh great, he knew two people in the room. Not to mention that the last one was a well-known former teacher and a man that ran for our last mayoral candidate election. I kept my head down and began to speed walk out of there.
Michael thought it was all hilarious! Of course, being the little stinker that he is, he took his time out of the building that night. I had to confess and ask him where the name of the candidate I was voting for was located on the ballot. Thankfully I chose the right spot. I was so nervous about my silly leggings that I barely remembered or took the time to double check my answer.
Needless to say, we had a good laugh when we got back in the car. I promised myself that I would change next time something came up like that again. Ironically, while at a women’s conference the following weekend, one of the speakers was sharing about the difference between living in community and living in comparison of others. I certainly had an application to the whole comparison part…Who knows, maybe next time I’ll either change or make sure I “own” that outfit and enjoy a few good laughs with others.
