The Curse of the Sportslady

Doesn't that sound like the title of a Nancy Drew mystery?

Nothing mysterious here. Fridays are the new Monday. Anything that can go wrong for me on a Friday, apparently will go wrong. I won't go into the details of every Friday this month... suffice to say, things were sucky. And for no apparent reason.

I will, however, tell you about one thing that happened to me this last Friday.

Last week, I split my time between covering Spring Training (Red Sox and Twins) and the ACE Group Classic, a PGA Senior Tour "Champions Tour" event. While spring training is more interesting (I met Bert Blyleven this week-- he was really nice. Cory got to play softball with him), there are advantages to covering pro golf. For one thing, the golf tournaments always feed you. And the food is usually really good.

Friday, I headed out to the course to shoot the first round of the tournament. Since I'm just one person, I obviously can't cover every golfer over the entire golf course. So, after eating, I planted myself in the shade on the eighteenth green, waited for the leaders to come in, and as they finished their rounds, I quickly interviewed them.

Photographers at PGA tour events are given "inside the ropes" access, which basically means that I get to stand where other people don't. The PGA gives us a big orange sticker to wear, so that people let us go wherever we want. The sticker, as it turned out, came in very handy.

See, shortly after I arrived on the 18th green and set up my camera, I needed to grab something out of my bag. I squatted down, and managed to bump up against a wooden stake sticking out of the ground. And I heard this:

Rrrrriiiiiiiiiipppppppp!!!!!

That's the sound of a giant rip forming in the ass of my pants.

I should point out here that I was wearing my favorite pants. They're a nice pair of lightweight khakis... a little loose on me, which makes them very comfy. They weren't super tight (thus facilitating the rip), and they weren't really worn out, either. No reason for them to rip, except of course for the big wooden stake that I bumped.

So there I am, pants flapping in the breeze, undies visible to the world (Fortunately, I hadn't worn anything with Snoopy or Hello Kitty on them that day). What to do?

A little light bulb appeared over my head. The Sticker! Sure, it would mean having a giant orange sticker drawing attention to my ass... but at least the whole world wouldn't see my skivvies.

So instead of spending an entire day with people pointing and snickering at the giant hole in my pants, I got to spend an entire day with people saying to me, "Hey, you know you've got a big sticker on your ass?"

And then I'd tell them that I had a big rip in my pants, and we'd all have a good giggle. It happened about 45 times.

The worst was on the drive back to work. I had to stop at a gas station, and while I was waiting in line, the man behind me started laughing. And talking in Spanish. And while I don't know much of the Espanol, when a guy is laughing, staring at my ass, and says something which ends with the word "pantalones," I'm pretty sure I know what you're talking about.

I turned around and smiled sweetly. "I have a rip in my pantalones. I had to cover it somehow." I laughed. He laughed. I'm just not sure if he was laughing with me or at me.