It’s time again, folks. Time for a couple more Lisa stories. Huzzah! I thought a couple light-hearted tales were overdue, especially after the crappy date stories lately.

My first tale begins in the winter of 1989. It was the holiday season and my family and I had gone into The City to do some shopping and take pictures with the ‘good’ Santa. The Santa that looks like he could actually be real was a fixture at the Powell Street Mall. Real looking or not, he always made my little sister cry. She was not a fan of Santa IRL.

During our visit, my mom needed to use the facilities so my dad, sister and I waited for her. As she was walking down the corridor back to us from the restroom, we noticed a man following behind her with a smirk on his face. She rejoined the fam and we discussed our next move. All of a sudden, a boisterous woman in a long fur coat interjects herself in the family circle, throwing her arms around my mom and dad’s shoulders. She turns to my mom and said, “Honey, I have to tell you, your skirt is tucked up in your pantyhose!!” To her mortification, she had given the whole mall a free peep show of her backside, which explained the pervert who was following her. To this day, because of this story, if I ever am wearing a skirt or dress, I always do a once over pat down before I exit the restroom. It most definitely left a lasting impression on me and I’ve never walked around with my ass hanging out because of it.  Thank you, Mom!

The second story occurred 16 years later. My mom, sister, aunt and I went to Arizona for Spring Training. We were staying at the newly renovated, retro Hotel Valley Ho. It was a pretty cool place, very 1960 mod vibe. Side note, the rat pack used to hang out there back in the day. One morning, as we were eating breakfast, my mom was ear hustling the table behind her. It was a table of men, one of which was the travel editor for the Today show. She over heard that they needed tickets to the baseball game that day. She happened to have a number of extra tickets in her purse, wrapped up with a very tight rubber band. She jumped up and introduced herself, leaving my sister, aunt and I at our table. She let them know she had extra tickets and was hoping that, in exchange, the Today show guy might talk about her company on the air. She came back quickly, grabbed the tickets from her purse, and brought them back to the other table. My sister and I were facing everything and my aunt had her back to the situation.

As my mom attempted to pry the tickets from the rubber band, it snapped off and hit one of the men just above his eye! “MY EYE!”, yelled the man, who was friends with the Today show dude. In a panic, my mom scrambled to pick up the ill fated rubber band from the ground. It was at this time, my sister and I watching the whole situation go down were frozen in horror.

We watched as my mother bent at her waist to snatch up the rubber band… Seemingly forgetting she was in a jean skirt…! All we could see was a full moon of white underwear. Then the distinct opaqueness of her sanitary napkin with the lovely frame of it’s ‘wings’. Here is a quick drawing for a visual:

Ashley and I grabbed each other in utter terror at the sight of the un-ladylike ‘bend and snap’ that we were witness to.

The two of us looked at each other and then erupted in absolute hysterics. My aunt was beyond confused. She had her back to everything and had no clue what was going on. At first, she looked between the two of us, whispering, “What!? What is going on!?”, but we we’re laughing so hard we could barely breath, let alone tell her what we had just observed. Then she moved from, “What?!”, to “You two need to leave. Go! Get out of here! GO!”  We were couldn’t control the fits of laughter we were experiencing. Though the streaming tears and the snorts, we exited the restaurant of the hotel, bouncing into each other, hilariously, into the lobby.

This story is now legendary amongst my parents friends.  All one has to do is yell, “MY EYE!” and everyone within ear shot erupts in laughter.  My mom is extremely lucky though.  The man she hit was an attorney.  A half and inch lower and things could have been much more worse than flashing the whole restaurant your undies and pad!

I don’t think that it is a coincidence that my mom is a wealth of stories like these two. Things like this always seem to happen to her.  As they continue occurring, I will always write about them.  The pad one still makes me laugh to this day, almost as hard as when I was watching it unfold.