Never Walked In High Heels

I was brought up with a relatively conservative background for a modern woman. At a young age, we were taught that we were to be careful about relationships we had, particularly amongst those of the opposite sex. We were to prize our bodies and under no circumstances were we to appear unnecessarily scandalous. Later, I revised the last point to add the word “unnecessary” as opposed to simply “scandalous” because after all, sometimes a little bit of scandal was fashionable. Therefore, when I called my mother late last night, I was expecting her to drop the phone on the floor. What I was not expecting was for her to commence laughing so hysterically that it took her a good fifteen minutes of me begging to finally bring her back to some sort of order.

It went like this: Last night my room mate was out of town for a single night and I was home alone. I had instructed a male neighbor of mine who happens to be one of my closest friends here to come over and plug in my electric chair at the end of the evening since I am unable to manipulate the cord by myself. He agreed that he would come by shortly after midnight and I left a key for him to get in. At approximately eleven o’clock, I decided that there is no point in waiting up for someone who is perfectly capable of plugging in an electric wheelchair on their own. So I began to get ready for bed. Shortly thereafter, I was attempting to undress myself and managed to get caught in my own white knit shirt.

Under normal situations, this never would have been a problem. Of course if my room mate were in town she would be helping me with my nightly duties. However, when I awoke that morning and carefully picked out my outfit for the day it came to me that I would be spending the evening alone and thus wanted my garments according to what I could get on and off with my own volition, or so I thought. By the time eleven thirty had rolled around, it was clear to me that because I was so warm from attempting in vain to remove my shirt, that I would never be able to get it off in such a state of panic which I had inevitably worked myself into.

In one last try, I attempted to pull the bottom of the shirt up over my head. This too was unsuccessful, and I had managed to loop the shirt around the back of my neck with my arms still completely in the sleeves. I had now reached a desperate measure and at eleven thirty-five, stuck in a shirt, late at night, I began to call all the female neighbors I could think of.

By the time I attempted to reach the sixth woman on my list, I heard my door unlocking and at that realized that my worst nightmare had indeed come true. I made my way downstairs tangled up in my white collared shirt.

Despite my embarrassment, my friend was more than happy to rescue me from my clothing malfunction. Finally reporting that he actually enjoyed “Rescuing damsels in such deep and disturbing distress.” At which point I raised my hand, forever clenched in that stereotypical quadriplegic fist, and I said “Guess which finger I would like to show you.”

On the one hand it was without a doubt one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. That having been said, there is something that, despite my conservative upbringing and my vain attempts to follow Jesus, I have managed to avoid, a much needed lesson which I needed to learn long before now.

Your best friends are the ones which you will doubtlessly be willing to break all the rules, even the rules of propriety for. Fortunately for me, my neighbor is one of those people who I will not only allow to see me vulnerable, but also see me completely humiliated, sweaty, frustrated, entangled in a shirt which is usually a simple on/off. Despite my embarrassment and the fact that I was on the verge of tears, he looked at me dead in the eye and said, “It’s no big deal. I have helped loads of girls take their shirts off before.”

Thank God for that.