"The Pink Panther Incident"

I’m still not entirely sure what it is that I’m meant to be blogging about here. I haven’t made any handicrafts like I intended. I’ve done some baking but for the most part I’ve been far too lazy to post on that because I’d have to take photos and put up the recipes and, ooohh puppies!! (short attention span). So today I’ve decided to tell a story about a stupid thing I did this one time with illustrations using paint, at which I’m amazingly skilled.

Now there are many things that I’ve done that are stupid but this particular incident is called “The Pink Panther Incident”(like the title! I love it when they do that in movies). It all started when I was a bonny young lass romping through the wilds of my garden in South Africa when my mum’s good friend Mary, who I don’t really remember but I know she exists, gave to me a then life sized (as in my sized) knitted pink panther. I thought this thing was amazing. I wasn’t allowed to play with it in case I got it dirty but I would sleep with it at night and it protected me from ghosts and who knows what else.

Fast forward a few years and I was a “rebellious” youth of 16. I wanted to go to some party or dance or something being held by a boys’ school at a tennis club, but not surprisingly my parents didn’t want me to go. Or I didn’t ask them, I forget. So to “stick it to the man” and prove just how independent, unruly and hard-hitting a teen I was I developed a plan by which I would sneak out to the party/dance thing when my parents had gone to bed and they’d never know. Just in case they checked on me in the night I would hide my pink panther under the covers and they’d be totally and completely fooled by my cunning.

So the night came, I put the panther under the covers and went to climb out of the only non-incredibly-loud-and-squeaky window in the music room. I forgot to mention it was Hawaiian themed, this party or dance thing, so I was wearing a sarong and several leis, though as it was winter maybe, well in Dunedin at least, I was also wearing tights underneath. With jandals/plaakies/flip flops/thongs for footwear (I pulled the tights out from my feet so I could smush them in between the toes of my sandals). None of this made me particularly agile.

Unfortunately I’d forgotten that just outside the window was the washing line which allowed the window to open only *this* much. For those of you who can’t see me I’m indicating my hand span.

So, in all my restricting gears, I had to manoeuvre out the tiny space trying hard to not get my head stuck and freezing every time I thought I heard something or someone. Eventually though, apart from losing a few hairs, flowers and bits of my tights I was free of the window. I was elated! I was so bad-ass! Haha parents! Try to stop me now from going to party/dance things which I may or may not have asked permission to go to!! This’ll show you!

So I ran down to the path to the car of my accomplices and their mum, who thought the whole thing hilarious (I imagine she realised how stupid it was, ah the wisdom of age) and we rushed off to the most awesome dance/party thing to ever be had!! At a tennis court.

We got there and talked to no one we didn’t already know. Which meant we didn’t talk to, party or dance with any of the strapping young lads we’d come to meet. Instead we tittered away embarrassedly while they loomed on the fringes of the dancing girls. My friends were having a blast! I, however, was riddled with guilt.

What if my poor unsuspecting parents came in to find me gone? We’re South African for heavens’ sake! My dad used to ring the police if I was more than ten minutes late from school! If they found me gone after midnight with no trace, except for a pink panther, they’d assume the worst! I could see them in my mind’s eye. My mum would be bawling her eyes out, my dad would be on the phone to the police, my brother would groggily be trying to understand the commotion and the cats would probably be asleep, but concerned maybe. They’d be devastated! I couldn’t believe what an absolutely horrible daughter I was. What kind of person does that to people who love you and are only doing their best to look out for you? So I convinced my friends to ring their mum to take us home early.

I rushed up our pathway and as quietly as possible tried to squeeze back through the tiny gap of a window, sustaining a few cuts and bruises on the way and snuck quickly back to my bed, only to find the pink panther exactly where I’d left it, the cat asleep on my bed (as I suspected) and everyone else well and truly in the land of nod. No one had even noticed I was gone! My most rebellious act ever and not one of my family even knew it happened. And all that guilt, for nothing. So I climbed into bed after evicting the pink panther and removing my fancy dress. A true rebel without a cause.