The California Raisin Story

I found a picture of me from 1988. My neighbor had a huge Halloween party and I dressed up as a California Raisin.



It was this costume that caused one of my top ten most embarrassing moments - and because I've shown you the picture I may as well share the moment too.

As I said, my neighbor was having a Halloween party. I'd been there about 10 minutes when someone realized we needed something from the grocery store. I volunteered to go and off I went.

It took a few minutes to get myself strapped into the seat belt of my car but once I did I drove on to the grocery store.

I got to the store, parked and went to get out of my car. I was in a hurry so I unsnapped the seat belt and went to jump out and run into the store.

Except that the costume got wedged under the steering wheel and the hook on my seat belt snagged the edge of the costume and I ended up falling, shoulder first out of the car.

But because the costume was stuck under the steering wheel and the seat belt was snagging it, I stopped just short of hitting the ground.

And then I couldn't move.

There I was, hanging out of my car in the Winn Dixie parking lot. And I was stuck. I couldn't unwedge the costume or reach the hook of the seat belt and no matter how much I wiggled I couldn't move. Which means I couldn't sit back up into the car either.

As I'm hanging there, wondering how I'm going to get myself out this mess I hear laughing.

Lots of laughing.

And since I'm hanging out of the car, I can't turn to see who's laughing but I'm pretty sure that whoever it is, they're laughing at me.

"Um, could you help me, please?" I ask.

A teenaged boy walks around to the front of my car so I can see him and what does he have in his hand? A camera!

He tells me that he'll be glad to help me but that this is one picture he has to have and he starts snapping away.

All I can do is hang there and wait.

He took several pictures and then crawled in through my passenger door, got the seat belt hook loose and pushed the costume out from under the steering wheel.

And the minute he did I fell the rest of the way out of the car and landed on the ground.

This brought even more laughter and I looked up to see a large crowd of people watching me.

Apparently I'd drawn quite a bit of attention - I mean how often do you see a woman with a raisin costume on and her face painted purple hanging out of a car?

I was so embarrassed that I scrambled back into my car and drove away without ever going into the store LOL

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