Pajama Stories
PJs gave me the two funniest experiences of my life
It’s been almost 5 decades since I completed my graduate studies, but nothing I’ve experienced since has been funnier than the two pajama stories I’m about to relate.
As an M.A. student at the University of Washington in Seattle, I lived in a graduate student dorm on campus. Four two-man rooms were clustered around a common living room and bathroom. Each room had two beds, one on each side, two desks, and small, walk-in closets at the heads of the students’ beds.
The university had a rule that during holiday breaks, all residents were to vacate the dorms. Although my roommate and I were aware of this rule, we decided to stay in our room for the duration of one of those breaks.
Early one morning, we heard keys clanging at the door to our “cluster,” as our residence was called. My roommate said, “They’ve come to check if we moved out. Quick, let’s hide in the closets!” Wearing my red flannel pajamas, I hurried into my closet. My roommate hustled into his.
Seconds later, two men entered our room. We immediately realized they had not come to check on us, but to clean the room and freshen up the beds. The man working on my bed said, “There’s no mattress cover on this bed.” The other guy replied, “The kids sometimes put them in their closets.”
When I heard that, I turned and faced the closet wall, so when the man stepped into the closet, he saw my red-pajama-clad back. Startled, he backed out and said loudly, “Oh!” The other guy asked, “Is everything okay?” He answered, “Yeah, let’s get the hell out of here!”
After they left, my roommate and I burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. We could only imagine the expression on the man’s face when he saw my back in the closet.
A couple of years later, now married, I was pursuing my Ph.D. studies at Princeton. For a summer, my wife and I house-sat for a university professor traveling in Europe. He owned a spacious home near campus with an attached two-car garage.
One morning, while my wife was at work on campus, I decided to empty the kitchen trash can. I was still sleepy, wearing blue, short-sleeve, short-pant pajamas — an embarrassing gift I had received from an aunt. The garbage bin was in the garage. Holding the trash can, I opened the kitchen door to the garage, and walked in. As soon as I got through the door, it closed behind me and locked!
So, there I was in the garage, locked out of the house. I opened the garage door. A bright, sunny day awaited me. And now I was on the sidewalk in my funny-looking blue pajamas.
A neighbor was working in her garden across the street. I timidly approached her, told her I was locked out of the house, and asked if I could use her phone to call my wife. Of. course, there were no cell phones then.
She looked at me suspiciously, and said she’d call my wife if I gave her the number. Fortunately, I remembered it. She walked into her house.
When she came back, I asked, “What did my wife say?” She answered: “Your wife wanted to know if you were wearing your short blue pajamas. When I told her you were, she couldn’t stop laughing, and said she would come rescue you.”
When my wife arrived, she was still laughing. Finally, I got back into the house.
The lesson of the red-pajamas story: Don’t jump to conclusions. The lesson of the blue-pajamas story: If you live temporarily in a house that’s not your own, make sure you know everything there is to know about it.
If, however, I had heeded these two lessons, I would have missed the two funniest experiences of my life — at least funny to me and to those around me. After 53 years of marriage, my wife and I still get a good laugh when we recall those two ancient pajama stories.
