Miss Ashley Pants

Sometimes, when mildly annoying shiz happens in life, we just have to sit back and laugh at ourselves – particularly our own reaction to it.

And then release it to the public to laugh at us too.

Like, okay. You know how in horror movies, the girl (who’s wearing one of those bras the Victoria’s Secret lady has to go all the way to the back to get because they don’t put tit slingers that big on display) always runs the wrong way to escape? Or she’s half naked as she’s being pursued by some aggressor? And he’s usually dawdling after her for the simultaneous purposes of dramatic effect and the confidence that she’s too stupid to not get dead imminently anyway?

Well, it’s easy to get involved in an old classic gory horror narrative, yell at the T.V., and remind the unassuming Curtis or Carmen Electra-esque characters, “You deserve to die if you’re that dumb!”

But, chicks totally panic when they’re uncomfortable, man.

I mean, we do it in real-life everyday bullsh*t situations. If I have to pee and the only thing between me and sweet release is a trot to my toilet (vaulted behind my front door lock), I’m suddenly a bumbling fumbling horror-film whore. I’m clanging this ring of tiny foreign metal saws with all the efficiency of a down-syndrome paraplegic using fingers that have magically morphed into cat paws on bath salts. If I’m lucky, I might actually get to pee ten minutes from this spastic psychotic break.

Occasionally, my bruised ego will get a glimpse of my neighbor delighting in the sight of the event unfolding – like a live action horror comedy.

Other times, much like the horror flicks, our only answer to stress is indeed: get naked and go crazy.

In college: A long week of exams was often followed by a Girls Gone Wild-esque Bourbon Street outing. The buildup of finals was always followed by, an: “Okay. That’s over. What now?” and an hour later a: “Why, yes! Beads for boobs sounds like a perfectly reasonable exchange!”

Long day of work and commuting? “Finally home now! Farewell pants! And socks! And top!”

Then, there was the more recent incident when I stood today – bathed in little more than the solitary silence of my apartment. I’d been in the middle of cooking, when suddenly I found myself under the fire alarm – my decency supplanted with a faint feeling of déjà vu. The ringing sound still resonated in my short term auditory memory and I asked the age old question, “How did it come to this, Ashley?”

I’ll tell you how. I’m a chick and I panic when life gets real. And life gets real in the kitchen.

Every time I make toast, that alarm goes off.

Every time, I forget my tyrannical toaster fries bread til it’s on fire.

And, without fail, every time I hear that bastard beeping bell blaring from the ceiling of the other room, I run at top speed down the hallway pulling off my sweatshirt as I go.

My split second chick-guyver logic is that, once I reach my destination, I’ll have some sort of elongated fabric to swat at the shrill blaring punishment on my ears – like an inappropriately cast surrender flag.

By the time I’m done, my hunger’s been replaced with nothing. Nothing but a race-paced heartbeat and accompanying adrenal deluge whose signs I can visibly witness through the skin of my asymmetrical breasts (bared for my audience of none but a canine who lets me care for her).

Well, that and a peppering of shame.