Those Darn Spanish Pants

One of my good friends from college, Sarah, calls Singapore home. Her dad is in shipping (the boat kind, not the postal kind) so they had moved there from California years and years before. Junior year she came back from summer break with these pants. They weren’t just any old pair of pants. They had one big piece of fabric that had ties at the front and back and I still cannot explain or understand how they worked. But when put on properly, they looked flattering with openings along the sides that moved when she walked. They exposed her calves in what I considered a very sophisticated fashion. Sarah went on and on about how amazing these pants were, and how she had bought multiple pairs, as you couldn’t get them in the States. And though I didn’t say anything, I was quite envious. I wanted a pair of those pants.

And then the summer after junior year, I studied abroad in Morocco. One weekend, a group of friends and I took a trip to Spain. That Saturday morning, the girls of the group went walking through the town. I bought a bracelet made of big pink beads that would eventually spread paint flakes throughout my luggage. I bought a blue and pink dress that cost more than five of the dresses I would buy at home, easily convinced by the other girls’ encouragement. And in a little shop that weirdly resembled Pac Sun, I found Sarah’s pants. Not just one pair, but in a variety of colors and patterns. Polka dot or Camouflage. With beads or strings. When I screeched with excitement, Alyssa looked over with concern. I showed everyone the pants and enthusiastically babbled about their value and rarity, while all the other girls went back to the racks they’d been looking through. No matter, I thought blithely to myself, they’ll be jealous when they see me strutting down the Spanish streets, rockin’ my new pants. I decided to buy two pairs, one in brown and one shorter version in pink with beads. I wore my new dress out to dinner that night, and through the bars and the cigar smoke I glowed with the glow of a girl who has just purchased life changing pants. Sunday morning I woke up in the hostel and packed up my belongings. I decided to wear my brown pair of pants. I was somewhat confused by the exact method of tying them up, but finally figured it out. Robyn French braided my hair while everyone finished showering and Ryan finished off the bottle of alcohol he wouldn’t be able to bring back to Morocco. This was not as sketchy as it sounds. Well, maybe it was, but it didn’t seem so at the time. We went down to the beach to say goodbye to Spain, and it was then that I discovered…

Wait; I have forgotten a very, very important detail. As we only had the weekend, we didn’t have the time to travel far into Spain, and ended up at Tarifa, where the boat from Tangier lands. Tarifa is on the southern tip of Spain, where the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean intersect. As you can imagine, it is windy. Make that extremely windy.

The instant I was walking outside and the wind began to blow, my pants began to abandon their post of covering my body. I frantically grabbed the edges of the fabric together against my thighs, but it was apparent to all that I could not stand up to the wind. And then my friends started laughing. And laughing. And insisting that everyone in Spain could see my behind. And then laughing some more. And they were right. To my abject humiliation, my pants somehow managed to completely expose me, while remaining tightly tied around my waist. I still tell myself that all the people who stared were simply curious about the foreigners wandering around town. After all, I’m sure no one noticed.

Those Darn Spanish Pants