Having Pants Trouble

I don't have to be deeply spiritual in every single post here, right?

This morning I got up in plenty of time to be ready for church. We have Sunday School at 10am and then service at 11:15... I think it was 8am when I got up. In fact, I rested so well that I woke up totally relaxed. I got up, got Mikey in the bath and got myself in the bath, and even listened to the music portion of the 8:30am service on the Web stream (I was scheduled to volunteer on one of the TV cameras in the 11:15 service, so it helps to hear the early service so you know what's coming up.) Mikey was dressed already when I went to the closet to get my khaki pants.

No pants.

WHERE are my PANTS? I couldn't figure out what I had done with them! They weren't in my dirty clothes hamper, they weren't in my closet, they were nowhere! And showing up in Sunday School without pants is, at my church at least, non-standard behavior. Potentially it would even be frowned upon. Ahem. Anyway, I was freaking out, so I started pulling out the pants I should have gotten rid of years ago... the ones that are so small in the waist that I can barely button them any more, the ones that are an inch too short, the ones that are so thin at the back pockets that you can almost see the tighty-whiteys through them. They were all, would you believe it, WRINKLED! (Imagine that... after being jostled around in the closet for only, like, eight years, they were wrinkled.) So I pulled out the iron.

Keep in mind that by this time we were fast approaching 10am and I was going to make myself late for Sunday School (again... we were late last week too.) So instead of setting up the big ironing board, I tried to iron my pants on the ground. And I set the heat too high, and the iron had some of that sticky black stuff on it that comes off on your clothes when the heat is too hot, and it came off on the first pair of pants I tried to iron. D'OH!

I'm not sure what made me think it was a good idea to try what I tried next. Any sane person would know it was a totally stupid idea, but I was trying to rush and maybe all the synapses weren't firing. Anyway, I tried to rub the sticky stuff off on the carpet. Of course it didn't work. What it did do was scorch a triangular shaped scorch into the carpet... D'OH!!! Now Cathy's going to KILL me!!!

Maybe scorching my carpet brought me to my senses or something, because I finally remembered where my khakis were. I have a chair in my room that I throw clothes on sometimes when I'm in a hurry to get changed... last week we went over to a friend's after church and I must have thrown them over that chair and forgotten. Anyway, when I saw how wrinkled they were, I realized that there was no chance of me getting to Sunday School in time. I would have worn jeans (we're a fairly casual-dress church) but you're not supposed to wear jeans when you're running a camera (the cam operators are up on platforms, very exposed, so the policy is that we are supposed to dress "business casual".) At that point I knew Sunday School wasn't going to happen, so I threw the pants in the clothes washer and waited on them.

By the time I got them out of the dryer, not only were they still damp and needed ironing anyway, but I was on the verge of being late for the church service! The policy is for cam operators to be there in place fifteen minutes before the service (in case there is a problem with the equipment, special instructions, etc.) Fifteen minutes before the service, I was stressed out, damp below the belt, and just leaving the house. I don't like to not be there when I'm supposed to be there, because I've been the guy on the other side of the equation... the one waiting until the last minute for the camera volunteers to arrive and wondering what I would do if they never did. I don't like to put someone else through that.

15 minutes to service time. And we live about 20 minutes from my church.

When we left the house, Mikey and I both commented that it didn't "feel like" we were going to church... it just felt like we were leaving to go to, I don't know, the store or something. We were totally not in the right frame of mind, and I was in an awful hurry to try to get there. Actually, I was either lucky or blessed with a lot of green lights, and I did the speed limit in places where I normally am not going the speed limit, and when I dropped Mikey off in the children's area I literally ran to the adult sanctuary. When I walked in, we were less than 2 minutes from starting... I had barely enough time to get onto my platform, unlock my camera, put on my headset, and provide this explanation:

"I'm sorry, I was having trouble with getting my pants to work right." (For some reason, nobody on the headsets asked for further clarification.)

So that's the end of the story... almost. I had just enough time to get settled when the service started, but it went unexpectedly well for me. I only made one "mistake" that showed up on the screens, and that mistake was really due to mixed signals from the director in the booth. In fact, one or two times the director switched to my camera before I was totally ready, and it worked out anyway and looked good. The message was wonderful (it was about how the forgiveness of sins bought by Christ on the Cross was once and for all, and we don't need to be born again over and over) and it was overall a great service. It's funny how you can be totally frazzled and still be used of God if you'll give Him the chance!