Sometimes I practice at a yoga studio in New Jersey, one not above a “video” store. They teach hot yoga, but it’s more of an Om-oriented place.
My favorite teacher quote came from Jagadisha, who also happens to be the studio owner. We were in some posture that was pure evil, probably triangle, and he was walking around adjusting postures, empathizing with our pain. “I know,” he said. “I wish I could sit on my couch and eat cake and it would make me one with everything. But it doesn’t work that way.”
Figures.
Last week I left the house after getting the kids off to school and brought my yoga clothes with me so I could catch a class in the middle of my day. I changed clothes in the studio’s changing room. I pulled on the pants.
They felt strange.
I tugged. I looked down.
These were not my yoga pants.
I have to back up a minute and talk about laundry. Everyone participates in laundry at our house. I learned early on that I should wash my clothes separately from the kids’ clothes and also never make them fold my stuff. Otherwise they steal it.
It isn’t just me they steal from. They all steal from each other. If a sibling has somehow managed to skate out of laundry detail and another sibling is folding their shirt, the laundry-working sibling considers it well within their rights to swipe the shirt for the next wearing. In everyone’s defense, there are a damn lot of clothes in our house and we don’t always know whose is whose. If you’re not there to speak up for your clothes, it’s your own fault.
I’m not morally superior to this practice myself, in theory. It’s just that I don’t actually fit in to any of their clothes, a fact I am reminded of when random kid clothes end up in my dresser and I don’t pay attention and try to put them on.
Which is how it came to be that yoga pants, size zero and belonging to #1 ended up in my closet, in my bag, and on my size eight ass at power Vinyasa last Monday.
Had I five extra minutes, I would have bought a new pair in the appropriate size from the studio. As it was, I didn’t, so I Om’d- for the space-age-stretchiness of synthetic fabrics, and Om’d some more that the seams would hold up, and took the Divine Guidance that came as a small, still voice inside me that said to sit in the back of the room. Or, more correctly, try not to sit.
I had a pretty stressful downward facing dog when the teacher came over to adjust my posture.
But then I remembered that I was in Jersey, and if you’re a woman and don’t wear clothes that are several sizes too small for you at least twice a year, they kick you out of the state (though you can usually bribe someone to get back in).
Have you made any. . .large mistakes lately? What can get you kicked out of your state?
JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom 
You’re right. Jersey is one of the few places you can wear clothes too small for you.
I think not liking crabs or not knowing what Old Bay is can get you kicked out of MD.
Our motto: if it zips, it fits! I had Old Bay flavored potato chips recently. It’s good on crab and shrimp.
Great Post! Loved what your teacher said…hilarious! and also that you did the class is those tiny pants;)
You are brave. I would have run away crying.
That’s about where I’d be–about a dozen miles away, having at least benefited from a good run!
too too funny!!
If you’d been sitting on the couch eating cake, this would’ve been a non-issue.
You make a damn fine point.
Is being a size 8 a bad thing?! This was hilarious but to be truly authentic, wouldn’t you need lots of makeup & big hair? Thanks for starting my day w a laugh.
I don’t get down on numbers and firmly believe that a size-anything body is only problematic when confronted with size-anything minus a few sizes pants. My hair does get pretty huge in that humidity. Also, I may or may not have been wearing copious amounts of waterproof (read: sweat proof) mascara. I’ll never tell 🙂
You are so funny, JM! Laundry, specially for stepkids, is a big gnarly thing — my stepsons hated it when I’d do their clothes (the underwear factor — duhhhhh!) and it was totally traumatic to see my darling stepdaughter graduate from cute Little Kitty underpants to wispy, raunchy thongs … way too much information!! I laughed my head off at the triangle pose (god, i hate that one!) and the lycra-exploding possibilities. Great post!!!
I’ve been reading your blog for a while now, and I must say, I hope that one day I’ll have children just as funny/random/interesting.. What a life.
Hilarious post as usual. I love that you still did the class. That is determination and commitment. I think I would have decided it was a good excuse to skip class and went to get a doughnut!
“I wish I could sit on my couch and eat cake and it would make me one with everything. But it doesn’t work that way.”
–That quote is awesome. I think I’ll put it on my fridge LOL!
If you want to joke about alcohol laws in the wine store (the – there is only one in town!) – it will definitely get you in trouble. You can’t buy beer and wine in the same store. Welcome to PA!
Great story!
Off to eat some cake on the couch and WATCH Rodney Yee in triangle 🙂
No way in hell I would have tried to put those pants on and wear them about while contorting my body. My body wouldn’t do the contortions, and neither would the pants (and I’m allegedly the same size as you– bet it’s carried differently, because my ass would never have made it in size 0s.). THAT would get me kicked out of my state. Also being a Republican. Well, it at least gets you shoved over into one little, wealthy, beautiful sliver of the state.
I had no idea what the triangle pose was until I googled it. Meh! Looks easy. (Don’t type in caps at me. I know it’s not likely that it’s easy. I tried yoga ONCE. I gave up and went to sleep while everyone else was doing floor things until it was over. Never. plan. to do it. again. EVER.)
The fact that you actually got those pants on is just amazing. They would have never gotten past my legs, let alone my hips. And I’m a size 6 (due to my amazing hips. lol).
The teacher’s quote, like everyone’s said, is GREAT!
I’ve made a sizeable mistake recently. It involved talking with Renee (of Teachers & Twits) a couple of months back, ignoring a couple of missed calls (assuming they were related to a text message I’d sent before picking up the phone) and then discovering they were related to Ba.D. having had an accident.
I assumed the “accident” involved automobiles, and thus impacted Li’l D, who’d been in the car with him the last time I saw both of them. So when I learned it was “just” a fall and probably a dislocated shoulder, I breathed a sigh of relief and asked, “Do you want me to relocate it for you?” (I’d had to relocate my own shoulder once many years before.)
His voice when he answered, “No, my mom’s coming to help” made me say an internal, “Oh, shit. Wrong answer!”
It’ll be a little while until I live that one down.
LOL “A pretty stressful downward facing dog” – I can just picture it! I walk Uncle Jesse around the neighborhood in Old Navy Yoga pants that are at least two sizes too small (some even have holes in them! Woo!), and now I feel even more okay with that fact, since you’ve reminded me it’s a Jersey thing.
I wore a skirt that was above the knee today, an apparent no-no when you are forty-three. And I don’t even have the excuse that it belonged to someone else. 😦
Well, you know what the Yogi said to the Hot Dog Vendor?
“Make me One with Everything” …
Mine do the same damn stealing stuff – but usually MY stuff, not each others – probably because having only recently arrived (relatively speaking) they are still accumulating “stuff” to steal from each other!
Unfortunately, Miss O 1 fits into clothes I USED to fit into before “the battle”! VERY DEPRESSING, I have to say. 😥 😥
Wait. I’m pretty sure there’s a yoga pose called Donning Small Pants! 🙂 In CT we have two methods of punishment: Either they make you stay here, or they send you to NJ.
Hiya, I came here via linkage from conchsaladesque 🙂
On more than one occasion when I was a teacher, I’d get up at dark thirty to go to work and put on shoes that didn’t match. I’d just kick them off and teach in my stockings.
Oh, and I found out that if you live in Georgia and claim to not like peaches that you will find out what “run out of town on a rail” means.