Amanda Lamb: Letting it all hang out

If you follow me on Facebook, you may already have heard this little anecdote about how I once again proved that this kind of stuff only happens to me.

It was a typical day-rushing through getting the kids dressed, making breakfast, driving carpool, the usual. After dropping my children off at school, I was assigned by WRAL-TV to go to the National Guard headquarters in Morrisville where families would be greeting soldiers returning from Iraq. Their return was slightly delayed. At noon I did a liveshot near the tarmac with excited families behind me cheering wildly, waving flags and welcome home signs. Little did I know that I was creating a little excitement all on my own...

A few minutes later when I headed outside, a woman in the parking lot approached me hesitantly.

"Are you Amanda Lamb?" she asked sheepishily.

"Why, yes, I am," I said enthusiastically thinking I was meeting a WRAL fan.

"You have a hole in your pants," she said pointing to the back of my pants as she put her hand to her mouth in embarrassment.

I reached back, and there it was, not a small rip, but a gaping hole the size of a grapefruit across the left part of my backside. Nothing was left to the imagination. I immediately leaned up against the news car to hide the hole. I was, unfortunately, locked out of the car. I had to wait until my photographer returned and gave me a sweatshirt to wrap around my waist so we could finish the shoot. He returned to the car under protest when I refused to tell him over the phone what was wrong. But when he did return, he laughed for roughly a full minute before letting me into the car.

After we finished our shoot, I had just a few minutes to run into a local store and grab a new pair of pants before returning to my office and putting my story together. I walked out of the store fourteen minutes later with a respectable pair of jeans to get me through the rest of my workday.

That night when I told my girls the story, they laughed until their stomachs hurt. They love hearing stories that prove I am fallible. They wanted to know if I was embarrassed. I told them, honestly, not really, that there were far too many things in my life requiring my attention to let a little hole (or even a big one) get me down. This sent all of us into new fits of laughter. From this perspective, it was the best part of my week!