Nylons

My new best friend is a pair of nylons. However, this relationship is a strained one. I hate my nylons and, for every reason, my nylons hate me. We hate eachother like Walter Matthau and John Lemmon in Grumpy Old Men. You'll see us together, out and about, trying to keep ourselves from tearing eachother apart.
This is what happens when you lose your restaurant job in a recession; you get to know the wadded pair of panty-hose tucked tightly in the back of your sock drawer which have only ceremoniously unfurled for funerals and family Christmas photos. Perhaps Easter Sunday.
If you're a guy, for those special occasions.
I hate nylons. All of my clothes are play-clothes, like in The Sound of Music; made of drapes and intended for tree climbing, canoeing, and frolicking across high Austrian hills.
All of my clothes except for the damned nylons are meant for adventure, though not even the nylons are protected from my sudden need to scale chain linked fences.
Why do I hate nylons? Many reasons. They:
dig into my hips
get caught on things I walk by
cover my feet and restrict the spontaneous need for barefootness
are itchy
Nylons make my legs look awful. I wear them because bare legs in wintertime are considerably more humiliating; white, cold; unavoidably prickly. Nylons are the lesser of these evils.
But don't forget, nylons are evil. If it were socially acceptable I would paint my legs. I would rather not have legs then wear nylons. If it were feasible I would burn all the nylon factories in the whole world and spend the rest of my days as a nylon assassin taking out the nylons still living in obscurity, hiding out from sure obliteration. Remember the days when women had to stop wearing nylons because they needed all the material for parachutes in World War II? I feel like I should of lived in those times, even if I had to be stay-at-home-mom with meager rights.
So. Job hunting. I travel from business to business with a forced smile and a pair of cruddy ill-fitting nylons trying to be the ideal employee, trying find something to pay rent, bills, food, etc.. Oregon has yet to jump in and bail out this sinking ship of financial siuation, even if I've been paying taxes since I was 17. So far, the only thing preserving myself from debtors prison is me and the nylons, bound at the leg, a non-stop variety show of songs and dances.
Unemployment in Oregon asks you to record all your employment endeavors; I've been doing the paper work and my records look pretty unfortunate. Here are some examples:

Employer Name and Address: McMenamins Old St. Francis, Bend, OR
Work Sought: Food Runner
Result: Applied online and brought in resume, received a call in the middle of the night, someone telling me I suck, in the morning application and resume were discovered on front porch covered in what appears to be urine.

Employer Name and Address: Old Town Pizza, Bend, OR.
Work Sought: Cashier
Results: Went to interview, was clearly too old for the job by the look of the eighteen-year-old's loitering, hiring manager looks like he's humoring me when he tells me he's not looking for experience, never called back.

Employer Name and Address: Devore's Grocery Store, Bend, OR.
Work Sought: Cashier
Results: Hiring manger told me when I dropped off application I was ugly and unlovable, no call back, week later found they had hired my arch nemesis.

Employer name and address: Jamba Juice, Bend, Or
Work Sought: Cashier
Result: Showed up two minutes late for orientation so they told me I couldn't be hired, knock over a tray of wheat grass samples, police come asking questions, left with a warning.

All of these precious moments are reminders of sad days my nylons and I were turned away. Truthfully, the only job I would like that requires nylons is the kind where you wear them over your face. However, these kinds of jobs are unreliable, risky and kind of unsanitary.
But as it stands, nylons belong on the legs and are a necessary aspect of my job search. Smile, Resume, Handshake, Nylons.
When I worked at my ex-place of business I would do this evil thing. Someone strolls in with their toothy smile asking a handful of questions: "Are you hiring?" "Can I leave a resume?" "Is this a fun job?" using all the skills their High School "Careers" class taught them. They hang on every word, their eyes shiny with trust and innocence. My own single-man peanut gallery sparks up; "god... you should just apply for unemployment," "save yourself the time and just be homeless," "you really think we're hiring in a recession?"
So, here I am, that desperately energetic person, my hands cupped, hoping someone will drop something shiny.
I know they are tearing me a new one every time they see my made-up face, my gently combed hair, my nylons. They are thinking what a douche I am.
And I deserve it.
Dear God (So what, if I make deals with God?),
If I get a job, I promise to never ever ever make fun of anyone who comes in to apply and even go to the extent of lying to them to fan the flames of their hope. I will tell them, "Sure! We'll be hiring REALLY soon! I heard the managers talking the other day! But it's not official yet! They haven't posted anything!" and I will tell them they have great nylons even though it's a lie and I will tell them "good luck!" and mean it. Amen.
Because needing a job sucks.
And wearing nylons sucks.
When this is all over, when I get a job, become homeless or move to Mexico to escape my looming debt, I don't know what I will become of ye olde nylons. Burn them in a ceremonious rite of passage? Take them out to the shooting range? Bury them? Likely they will return to their old haunt, the corner of my sock drawer until another "desperate time, desperate measures" time will strike again.