Every now and then, we all have "one of those days." In fact, some of us have them more than we'd care to admit. You oversleep the alarm, you stub your toe on the bed, you can't find where you put your darn keys for the millionth time. (You know the kind.) But then there are those other days that seem to make up for it all. The ones where you're somehow getting where you need to go on time, the kids are — inexplicably — not complaining, and you're kinda feeling like Super Mom. Last week, Mary Katherine Backstrom of the parenting blog Mom Babble was having one of those days, and she was feeling pretty incredible about it, too. That is, until she was halfway through her day and realized she'd forgotten one teeny tiny thing … that was not so teeny tiny.
According to Backstrom, the day started off better than most, which left her feeling like a "kick butt mother."
"My doctor upped my medicine last week and I’ve been feeling goooood," she explained in a July 31 Facebook post, and everything was kind of clicking. "No more out-of-control, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type parenting for this mama," she continued. "I am Mary Freaking Poppins, y’all."
When she lays out all of her morning accomplishments, they are pretty impressive.
She managed to bake muffins and pack lunches and read books to her kids and even picked out some "adorable matchy-matchy outfits," all before shuffling the kids off to school. Sure, there were the normal breakfast table meltdowns, but Backstrom says she handled them with patience and heart.
She was calm. Cool. Collected. Or, in her words, she was "pretty much a bastion of parenting perfection."
But despite feeling on top of the world, Backstrom made a critical error amid the morning chaos. One she wouldn't even notice until hours later.
"Somewhere between packing lunch boxes and brushing ponytails and generally herding cats (like moms do), I threw my black skirt in the dryer to get the wrinkles out," she wrote. "Who has time for an iron, ammiright? Not me! I was busy being SuperMom. Into the minivan kids! Time to sing happy songs on the way to school!"
Right now, you're probably thinking: Oh no, did she shrink her skirt?Or even worse, Did the dryer rip a hole in it?
But oh no, my friends. Just. You. Wait.
Backstrom continued about her morning, getting the kids to school five minutes early and arriving at her doctor's appointment with time to spare.
Woo hoo!
"GLANCE UPON MY GREATNESS, YOU UNDERLINGS," Backstrom wrote. "I am SUPER MOM."
But you see, it was also in that moment -- as she hopped out of her minivan and headed inside to her doctor -- that she felt a slight ... breeze.
It was the kind of breeze that felt out of place. The kind that one would surely only feel if they were pantsless. And surely, she wasn't pantsless. That would be crazy! RIGHT??!
"Omg," wrote Backstrom, recalling the sudden wave of panic that came over her. "No pants no pants no pants. NO PANTS!!!!"
Indeed she had left the house with no pants at all, after forgetting that pesky skirt in the dryer — and she'd been scooting around town half-naked without even realizing it.
Oh LAWD.
Now, if ever faced with this predicament, your first inclination would probably be to RUN HOME NOW.
But Backstrom says that wasn't an option, because her doctor's appointment was literally about to start and she didn't have time to race home.
Lucky for her, she was wearing a tunic, which covered her nether regions just enough to maybe get away with it. (And thank god, since she also notes she was wearing floral granny panties under there — the kind with holes.)
It didn't take long for her Facebook post to go viral, as thousands began sharing her oh-so-relatable mom fail.
"This is the greatest thing I’ve seen all day," wrote one woman. "You started the day by channeling Mary Poppins and ended it by channeling Winnie the Pooh. You’re all about the classics!"
Others shared some of their own embarrassing mom fails.
"If it makes you feel less alone in your embarrassment," one woman wrote, "last weekend I pulled a toddler out of the bottom of the deep end of a hotel pool (he was ok, thank goodness). I was shaken up afterward, so I returned to my hotel room, only to discover that my right boob had fallen out of my swimsuit during the rescue and I walked through a hotel lobby with my boob exposed for all of the tourists in Pittsburgh to see."
(YIKES!)
It's true — stories like these make us all feel a bit more normal, moms or not. Because even if we've never left the house without our pants (yet), we've all been caught in a moment of harried forgetfulness. And knowing that we're not alone sure helps quell the embarrassment.
