A funny thing happened on the way to dinner

I seem to have things that occur in my life which are always a little wacky.

Here is an example of things that seem to happen only to me:

A few years ago I had a professional, formal, dinner dance to attend. I had purchased an absolutely gorgeous dress along with all the accessories and planned to wow everyone that evening. And I thought that maybe, since he was going to be there, I could show off and rub my ex’s nose in it a little-make him see what he was missing.  I had also recently purchased a vintage, little red convertible and decided to drive it to the event. (I was REALLY planning to impress).  So I decided early that afternoon I would wash and wax the car; get it glowing and lovely.  I went to the auto parts store and purchased all the necessary items to clean and wax the car, including a special bottle of car wax that came in red to match the car. It was supposed to add color and luster to the finish.  Well, I spent hours cleaning and waxing that car.  It really shone when I was done with it; I was proud of the effort.  I went into the house to shower and get ready for the evening when to my surprise and dismay I found that the red car wax had also dyed my hands red.  OH NO!  I scrubbed them with soap and a scrubby:  still red. I scrubbed then with Lava soap. No luck.  I tried mineral spirits.  Now my hands were getting really raw and sore in addition to being red. I think I actually made the red worse as my hands were so irritated that they were turning scarlet. These are times I refer to as my “Lucy” moments as it seems that she and I share a propensity for getting into various ‘jams’.  I started to panic. The only thing I could think to do was to wear gloves.  Now, no one wears formal gloves anymore and I knew I would stand out and not in the way I wanted but I did have an old elbow length pair that had belonged to my mother so I dug them out.  I decided that I would try imitating Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” and wear the long gloves with my gown.  Luckily the gown I had purchased was red, strapless and satin so not too far from the gown she wore in the film.  I also had images of Blaze Starr in my head and hoped no one would confuse me with a stripper. And I guess it matched my red hands, not that I was planning to show them off to anyone.  I got dressed and donned the gloves, held my head high and attended the dinner. 

I did run afoul of the etiquette rule that one should remove their gloves when eating, but since no one had seen opera length gloves in such a long time I was pretty sure no one would even know that rule existed.

I managed to pull off the event even though I garnered a lot of strange looks and at least one guy wanted to know if I was with the 'entertainment'.  I also ended up being the subject of several conversations for the next few years of the event as other women wondered what I had been thinking with those gloves and whether I was “funny” or trying to set a new fashion trend. I am pretty sure I did not impress anyone in the way I wanted to. Still I got to drive the cute little car!

My hands did eventually return to their normal color. Thankfully.