Three examples of personal wardrobe malfunction

The year - 1986.

I was a cocktail waitress at a nice restaurant. The backbar in the lounge was about 15 feet high and had glass shelves over a mirror that held liquor bottles all the way to the top. To reach the top shelf the bartenders used an old fashioned sliding library ladder.

One night someone brought a camera and we workers posed for pictures on the ladder. I was wearing a short wool mini-skirt with a tan houndstooth pattern and a cream colored sweater. Classy. But in posing for the picture I failed to put my knees together and the photographer got a shot straight up my skirt. Because I was sitting on the ladder my crotch was at about eye level, and hence was perfectly centered in the picture. Bad, yeah. But what was worse was that I was wearing my nylons inside out, so the crotch shot is of that white cotton panel that should have been on the inside.

The year 1989 -

Before Manhattan became the 'New Disneyworld', like in the David Dinkins days, people were actually kind of afraid to go to New York. Saying you were going to New York was akin to saying you were going to Beirut. I had my college internship in Manhattan and was really nervous. People said things like 'don't make eye contact' as if Manhattanites were zoo animals likely to throw you to the sidewalk and sever your achilles tendon with their teeth. On my first day on my own in Manhattan I was wearing a tailored rayon blouse (this was the 80's, remember. Rayon was stylish!) and some of those really wide legged Kate Hepburn pants with the "paper bag" waist that was cinched in with a belt.

As I walked around midtown I realized that everything I heard about New Yorkers was wrong. Lots of people were making eye contact with me and lots of people were smiling too! I had heard that this vile breed never smiled. I strolled down Madison Avenue and swung into an irish pub (Dwyer's, I think) to go to the bathroom and get a beer so they wouldn't mind me using the bathroom. Once I got into the bathroom I realized that all the smiles were because my big pants with the extra long fly -thanks to the high waist that meant from about my bottom rib to my crotch - were unzipped. This was not a subtle 'oh, your barndoor is open'. This was hey, I can read all of the word 'Monday' on your undies, open.

I still think most New Yorkers are nice.

The year 2007 -

At the pool last week my two girls were throwing their swim goggles and then swimming to the bottom of the pool to get them. Eldest threw her goggles over to the swim lane area and couldn't find them. Though I was at the pool in my suit I didn't plan on swimming, but lost goggles are getting to be a thing around here so I went in after them. My child was characteristically vague about where she thought the goggles might be so I ended up covering most of the swim lane area of the pool as well as the big kid area. This space is governed by no less than three life guards. I was trying my best not to get in the way of the swimmers in the lanes. I kept making surface dives, at one point coming up beneath a lifeguard chair. The lifeguard looked at me and started to say something but then she stopped. I thought maybe she could see the pink goggles from the surface, but no.

Finally I found them lying on top of a black lane stripe on the bottom of the pool. I went over to the side and when I reached out of the pool I noticed that my left breast was about 3/4's out of my swimsuit top. The 3/4's part that includes nipple.