Walk a Mile in My Thongs

I’ll age myself here. Years ago, thongs were an article of clothing that didn’t run anywhere near your butt. They were actually sandals, as in flip flops, Zories and -thongs. Sometimes I desperately wish someone could walk a mile in my thongs and then give me an outsider’s perspective on what they would do if they really had been me for awhile.

Problem is, I’m not sure which pare of thongs I want them to try on first. Apparently my closet is full of thongs. Let me see, should they try on the military wife thongs first? These are the ones I wear to base functions. Here, I’m “the wife of (insert rank/name here). They are Mormon and don’t drink so don’t offer them a glass of wine or that ice cold beer with a wedge of orange; no just give them a soda, like the kids get.” Little do they know, I would kill for that glass of beer and probably a couple more just like it. Or there is always the “I’m a Lesbian, LDS temple married wife & mother” thong. If you think that’s a mouth full, trying wearing it. And yes, I meant to say thong as in singular, because I really don’t need them as pair since this is one amazing balancing act. Or how about my most recent purchase, the “Hey I no longer believe the church is true!” thongs. But of course these thongs are so newly purchased that I have to keep them in the box they came in, until I can figure out how to explain this new purchase. At some point I will wear them out one day and say “these old things oh I have had these forever.” As in; what do you mean “suddenly” lost my testimony, I’ve always felt this way… Or how about the thongs I wear to church each Sunday, my stealth thongs. These allow me to fly under the raider undetected as I walk the halls and try to act just like every other TBM sister on Sunday, totally straight, and testimony intact.

My closet hasn’t always been so full of thongs. Once not so long ago, I had one pair of thongs for all occasions. These were my “truth” thongs. When I wore my truth thongs I really was the Mormon military wife who didn’t drink and was happy with a Diet Coke in hand. I wasn’t a Lesbian Mormon wife/mother because God didn’t make Lesbians and I had these hip truth thongs to prove it. I didn’t need stealth thongs to walk the halls of church because I believed I if I acted straight God would bless me to be so, and my testimony really was intact.

But in the past year that has all changed. While traveling on vacation one sunny afternoon from the land of correlated doctrine, I noticed the landscape had become completely unfamiliar to me. So I stopped at a roadside inn called the “The Rest of The Story”. Some of you might be familiar with it, it’s at the crossroads of DNA and Book of Abraham just outside the city of WTF? Anyway that’s where I lost my truth thongs. Once I noticed they were missing I saw that my “sole” was far too tender, and far to exposed to go without the protection that thongs could offer. I also realized that I was no longer going to get away with wearing just one pair of thongs anymore.

Some days I just want to kick off these thongs all together and let my feet go naked on the warm earth beneath me. Bare, exposed, completely in touch with the world I walk in. I just want to be happy with my own “sole” for awhile. In that same day it would be nice if I had a few friends who weren’t afraid to kick off their own thongs, grab an ice cold beer and sit a spell. Someday soon, I plan on baring my “sole”, dumping all my thongs and walk out of the house completely naked!

St. Jude