I don’t buy new pantyhose often. I don’t know how often
normal people are even supposed to buy them; I only know that I will buy them
when and only when all of my other pairs are completely ruined. Last Sunday
morning, I had to open a new pack of them because of unfortunate ripping and
runs in my best black pair. I was eating breakfast on my couch before church (I
like to eat on the couch way better than at the table) in my fuzzy bathrobe and
new pantyhose and looking at how nice my legs looked in these new hose. They
looked shapely and smooth. I thought about how disappointed I had felt about my
old pantyhose needing to be retired. As I was sitting there, relaxed with my
tea in the still and quiet morning low-lit living room, I heard myself think, “These
pantyhose will never let me down.”
This is that kind of moment where it is necessary to preach
to oneself instead of listen to oneself think.
It’s true that one of the more disappointing feelings I’ve
felt is that of realizing that a pair of pantyhose is no longer wearable. It
isn’t personal, but it feels personal. It feels like they just couldn’t handle
me anymore.
It starts so simply: they catch on something, anything.
(It’s usually me who subjects them to whatever it is that begins their
ruination). And I always pretend that they didn’t, and that they’re completely
okay and unaffected and that nothing at all happened, because I want them, and
I need them, and I like them. Then they run. And the running part is the
saddest part, because I can’t look away. It can’t be hidden. It’s
dishearteningly public. And then I have no choice but to throw them away,
because they are unusable. They are obsolete. I think that obsolete is one of
the most defeated things to be.
So then I open a new pair. And I think that this time it
will be different. They will stay with me forever. They will be with me still
ten years from now, when I’m in my thirties and actually know how to be an adult. We will go through so much together…but in reality, these will last me a
few months at most.
And this time, on Sunday morning, just as every other time, I convinced myself
that it was different. This pair was lovely, just so beautiful. Or
maybe I just felt so beautiful in them. It had been so long since I’d had a new
pair that I forgot what it was like to have a pair that wasn’t stretched out,
and it took me a few extra minutes to get them on, but then I did, and they
were secured, and together, we made a team. I was hoping that we would be
inseparable (not physically, but emotionally). They had a control top, which I
don’t particularly need, but I like. When I have a control top, I feel like
nothing can go wrong (I forget that the “control” refers to just my stomach and
not my whole life).
The new pair will let me down. It’s guaranteed. It would be
unnatural for this pair to last me ten years. This pair is just as likely as
all of the others to catch on something I walk into and run until I
feel like it made a conscious choice to run away from me because it knows me. Maybe when it leaves
me I will find an even better pair. Maybe I won’t. Maybe pantyhose are just
pantyhose and they are all the same level of completely neutral items. I
probably won’t remember this pair of pantyhose as distinctive from any of the
others that I’ve owned in my lifetime. That makes me kind of sad.
But then I remember: these are pantyhose, not people.
