A Short Missive on Tights

One of the things about working at the State Capitol is that there are cameras everywhere. Between just the fact that it is a government building and the fact that we now live in a Homeland Security Rainbow Alert world, there is nothing you can do anywhere on the campus of the Capitol without being recorded. Now, I’m sure that most of the time the state cops who are monitoring those cameras are unable to actually watch what is going on in range of all the hundreds of them. Still, as a rule, I try not to pick a wedgie or fix my bra anywhere in the building except for inside the four walls of the bathroom stall. (And I’m not even sure that the bathroom stalls don’t have cameras…) But yesterday I was wearing some tights that kept falling off my ass. This is because I recently lost over 10 pounds and they no longer fit properly (yay me except for the expense of buying new stockings). However, this also means that periodically throughout the day until I get around to buying some new black tights, I have to stop somewhere out of view of people and yank my skirt up under my armpits, bend over, and slowly work the extra material that has now gathered down around my ankles back up to my hips where it belongs. (And do so without causing a run due to my icky winter-time fingernails.)

If I do not do this, I risk walking down a long hallway in the Legislative Office Building while my stockings slowly fall all the way down my legs and rest—crotch exposed—between my ankles while I try to crab-walk to the nearest bathroom. And there are always dozens of people in the LOB hallways just waiting for someone like me to do something embarrassing so as to entertain them. No, this has not happened yet. Almost, but not quite. What has happened is that I’ve had to duck into an empty conference room or office, close the door, and perform the skirt-lifting, stocking-tugging ritual described above. All the while knowing that there’s a chance that just maybe some state cop down in the control room is sitting there calling his buddies over to ogle and laugh at me. And should that happen (or should that already have happened), then I will forever be followed around the building by the monitor-watching cops, just waiting to see what I might do next. Still, it can’t be helped. I’ll have the state cops ogling me in private any day over dozens of legislators, lobbyists, and staffers pointing and laughing in public at my bare ass shuffling quickly away from them.

Plus I'm sure I'm not the first person to be doing something inappropriate in private while the Staties silently witness down in the control room.