And If It DOESN’T Work Out, Well, Then I’ve Got Another Blog Post

It’s quite possible that I will skip the bean burrito I had planned for dinner.
And I’ve thrown out the kale salad I had made for lunch.
I rifle through my purse.  Do I have any Beano? 
I am speaking at Metro State University tonight, to a creative writing class, and my biggest fear is not that I will get lost on the way there or that I will have nothing to say, but that I will develop gas roughly at the same time I say “Hello.  My name is Pearl, and I’ve been writing the blog “Pearl, Why You Little” for the past five years”.
Frankly, I don’t need the pressure.
I e-mail my sister with my concerns.
“Have you considered plastic pants?” she writes.  “The kind with the elastic around the leg holes?”
“So sweaty,” I write back. 
“Well it is fall,” she says.  “You can’t be too warm.”
“I’m going to write about this,” I say.
“And I will be inaccurately quoted, as usual,” she says.  “Oh, well.  Purple monkey elevator.”
I nod at my screen. 
Maybe she has a point.  Maybe plastic drawers isn’t a bad idea…
But no.  Plastic pants lack the professorial dignity I’ve been working on for, oh, the last 45 minutes.  Besides, the rustle of plastic under the fweep-fweep-fweep of a chubby-thighed woman in corduroy pants would be overwhelming, possibly detracting from the solemnity of a college lecture…
I have very important things to say, you know. 
I check my watch.  I leave in an hour.
I’m sure it will all be fine.