Wendi Rank – May 2025
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The warm weather is coming.
Maybe, by the time you read this, it will already be here.
I’m not a warm weather person. Give me negative temperatures, blizzard conditions, and a cozy place to view it from. I’ll be a happy girl. Because here’s the thing about me. I don’t wear shorts.
I wasn’t always this way. Shorts were, of course, a wardrobe staple. But somewhere between kid number two and my fortieth birth- day, shorts became like those friends that ditched me in the seventh grade. That is, never discussed – but never forgotten, either. And it’s not just them. It’s their cousins.
Wait. Not the seventh-grade friends’ cousins. I mean the shorts. Their cousins. I’m talking capris and clamdiggers. Cigarettes and 7/8 leggings. I’ll wear none of it.
It wasn’t one thing, one bad experience severing my relationship with shorts. The beginning of the end came insidiously, like one ant in the kitchen becoming an infestation.
I had these sandals – they were great. I could wear them with shorts. With dresses. With skirts. With – yes – a nineties jean. They were perfect. One day, the leather separated from the sole. I took them to a cobbler. “They’re beyond repair,” he told me. Which was fair. I bought them when I was single. On this day, I rolled into the cobbler’s place with two preschoolers.
This being the Amazon era – something that didn’t even exist when I first bought those sandals – I figured replacing them would be easy. Not so much. The heels were always a little too high. Sometimes they were too low. Some had a strap on the heel I’d have to tug up as I walked. Some had a leather loop around the big toe that just didn’t speak to me.
This has gone on for years. Those preschoolers are now teens. And I have yet to find the perfect sandal.
One day, I wore out my bra – the plain one I paired with polos. Those polos – they hit the waistband of my shorts just right. I tried for a new bra. Really, I did. But the wire pinched my rib or the side gaped and everything else I tried wearing under those polos weren’t as secretive as Victoria would have liked.
The last insult came when my preferred short length from my preferred shorts store ceased to exist. They’re just gone. The re- maining lengths – no. The three-inch shorts? Far too minuscule. Unless, you know, I’m singing a very repetitive song about short shorts. And the nine-inch shorts? I don’t know. Am I Laird Hamilton catching a wave? Because they sure look like board shorts to me. Not that board shorts are the problem. Not at all.
My legs are the problem. Short and pale, the knees still red from that day I tripped over my teenage son years ago. I mean, shouldn’t that have healed by now?
And let’s get down to the nitty gritty here – years of wearing jeans and khakis all summer have done nothing to improve the pallor of my legs. Or my heat tolerance. But over the winter, I found replacements for those perfect sandals of long ago. In, of all places, the gynecologist’s office.
For months, I searched the internet in vain, looking for the sandals gracing my gynecologist’s feet. Finally, I used her office patient portal to ask her for the brand. Oh yes I did.
And now I’m wondering if it’s wrong to hope she wears shorts at my next exam. But the bra? Eh. That might be a bridge too far.
Contact Wendi Rank on Instagram @wendirank
