Sometimes You Go Out In Your Pajamas

KimR5413

(These posts are from a collection of emails I sent out to friends and family to update them on my progress. I hope they help you.)

Leaving the house in my pajamas is a hard NO. It’s just something I don’t do. I wouldn’t let my nieces do it, and that was a big debate one year. I just believe that while your clothing does not determine how smart or kind you are, plenty of people judge. They judge you on what you wear, where you bought it, if it came with “labels” and what those labels say about you. They assume that you are smart or not or pretty or not or successful or not based on what you are wearing. While deep down inside I don’t really care, I DO care about how people are going to respond to me and how I present myself. I don’t have to be “put together” all the time, however I am NOT going to have someone treat me like trash because I am out in my pajamas. And they will! Trust me, people treat me very differently when I’m in biker clothes vs. my corporate clothes. 

Well, one day in the middle of the summer, I had a bloody nose. I was told that if I had one that lasted more than 15 minutes, I should go to Urgent Care. I was getting into my second box of tissues when I had a thought…My dad, who was a volunteer fire department member in Chicago, once told a story of putting maxipads all over someone’s head who had been in a motorcycle accident. They are the most absorbent. So…why not put a tampon in my nose? Now, I had already been peri and menopausal for a while and didn’t have them laying around anymore. The few I did had been used up by the kids over the years. I hollered for my oldest niece and asked her to bring one. GREAT! Now I am in business! Maybe now we can get this to stop.

Wrong! It was still going, and I was well past 15 minutes. Damn it!! I didn’t want to go to the Urgent Care today. It was a Saturday, and we were just hanging out watching movies and making food. I called my husband and announced that I was going to need to go. 

First thing he asked? “Are you going to change?” I thought about it. For a moment, I thought yes. Then I threw caution to the wind and said, “no.” I put on my tennis shoes and a sweatshirt and asked my niece for a bigger tampon. That little mini was done.

Now, picture it: bald as your eighth-grade teacher, plaid flannel pajama bottoms, a T-shirt, and a hoodie zipped up over all of it, tied together with a tampon hanging out of my nose. The next decision? To cut or not to cut the string. F-it! I was going as is. 

Off we went. J drove me and we arrived in a short amount of time. As I entered, I did receive a few very strange looks. I mean, how many times do you come across a woman wearing a tampon in her nose and letting the string fly free?

When we arrived, I noticed a kiosk with an elderly man in front of it presumably trying to figure out what to do with it. One person stood at the front counter and a couple of young ladies worked behind the counter. I went straight for the line at the kiosk and stood behind the elderly man. At this time, one of the YOUNG ladies asked me if I was there for care.

Are you kidding me? It was all I could do to answer with a straight face, “Yes, ma’am,” thinking, No! I just like to hang out in my pajamas in public with a tampon hanging out of my nose for something fun to do on a Saturday! What the hell else would I be there for? And my family thinks I don’t have a filter. Pft. 

She instructed me to get in line and check-in using the kiosk. You mean the line I am standing in? “Yes, ma’am, will do,” was what came out of my mouth. “Are you going to be the one treating me?” I asked. 

“No.”

Well, thank God for that. If her levels of observation and reason were what I was going to experience, I was going to leave.

The treatment was no fun and the doctor was able to stop the bleeding, but that is another story. 

Lesson: When life gets real, dignity comes from how you carry yourself—not what you’re wearing.