As Promised: The Classic

One weekend my sophomore year of college, my sister-ish (Nicole) and the closest thing I'll ever have to a mother (Wendy)and I all went shopping. We were in a department store looking at shoes when we came across the ugliest pair of shoes I had ever seen. They were a pair of Nike athletic shoes that had a separate big toe holder. They were similar to the pair in the picture, but with an even uglier color scheme.

I jokingly held one up and showed Wendy. I QUIETLY made a joke about them being camel toe shoes. Wendy, completely oblivious to camel toe meaning anything other than the hoof on the animal with the humps, holds one over her head and yells at Nicole to "Look at the Camel Toe Shoe!" Immediately embarrassed I grabbed her by the arm and told her she couldn't yell that in public. She was so confused. By this time Nicole had come to the same side of the rack as us and we were both laughing so hard that we couldn't breathe, so much as speak.

Wendy just looked at us bewildered and and kept saying "What is a camel toe?" You would think that she would pick up on the fact that it was something inappropriate just by our reactions, but she kept going. Finally she said, "If you girls don't tell me what a camel toe is, I'm going to ask someone." Nicole and I did our best to try to contain her to our side of the isle while laughing so hard we were doubling over. Unfortunately, Wendy was very determined and walked to the end of the aisle to this poor man who was probably in his mid-twenties. She says to him, "Excuse me, could you possibly tell me what a camel toe is?"

The look on his face was priceless. He was doing his best to not die of laughter (like Nicole and I who were hiding behind the other side of the rack pretending not to know her.) The way she asked him was like she was asking him the time or for directions. He had this huge smile and just said, "I'm sorry I don't know what you are talking about." Clearly the poor man didn't want to explain to a 46 year-old woman that it was when a woman wore her pants too tight.

Nicole and I managed to put ourselves back togther, more out of the fear of her asking someone else, than out of the situation not still being funny and tell her what a camel toe was. She was so pissed at us. She couldn't believe that we let her ask that guy what it was.

That year on Wendy's birthday, Nicole and I happened to come across a pair on sale and we bought them for her. The look on her face when she opened the box was almost as good as when she first realized what she had asked a complete stranger.