JOY ALONG THE WAY: RISE UP YE WOMEN TIRED OF RUNNY HOSE

I hate to sit around with no purposeful project in mind, even though it may be subject to much ridicule by the general public and possible litigious activity against the charter members should the plan involve a group.

My thoughts are revolving around a protest movement. The acronym would be WARS, standing for Women Against Runny Stockings.

I overheard some statistics recently that declared that a woman gets about six wears out of a pair of hose before it springs a runner, any old where, any old time, even if she keeps her toenails filed smoothly and has no corn plasters that stick to the spider-webby stuff of stockings.

I'm getting sick and tired of it. What I propose is that women continue to wear their hose even if three or four runners reach from toe to thigh or beyond, with possibly big gaps midcalf. Make no apologies. Act as if that is how manufacturers meant for them to look. Wear them to church, dances, in the workplace.

Have a Congressional study made of the situation. March on Washington. Women only. Circle the White House singing "We Shall Overcome, in Spite of Every Run." Have meetings in woodsy areas where there are more snags and briars to accentuate the flimsiness of the product. Hang socks on mailboxes to twist slowly in the wind. Put see-in-the-dark cards in windows stating your vote will be withheld from senators and representatives who take no action on this affirmative action to aid women who have "fell through the net" so to speak.

By all means, boycott manufacturers of hose that run if touched by not as much as a wisp of milkweed floss.

Take something away from Medicare, Medicaid, Madi-gap, Social Security, NASA, Defense, entitlements, arts, interest on debt, whatever else is in the pie to finance a Blue Ribbon Commission to Stop Runners in Hose, members of which will be hanged if they do not find a solution in eighty days.

If all else fails, women, I implore you to form clubs to make or cause to have made, hose of cowhide, Angora goat hair, eiderdown, canvas, armadillo scales.

Personally I would go for Angora, the long curly kind. Who cares if the men would cast disgusting glances? It's your money, your endangered vocabulary when just before dressing for a funeral or formal, you find a runner in your last pair of nylons.

Just look at the action biblical Jacob got from wearing a hairy armlet!

If I'm successful in starting such a movement I'll probably find myself sitting between lawyers, much as O.J. did. If so, I want an all-women jury, working women who have had to abide by a no-run-in-hose dress code.

Litigation fees? Shucks, I could write a dozen books about hose that run. Million dollars a book maybe. There would be an in-depth study of spider webs and how we might breed spiders to crochet stockings.

A rope of spider's silk one tenth of an inch thick would hold up seven and two-fifths tons. Pretty tough stuff compared to nylon.

I dunno, though. I sort of lean toward panty-hose of long silken Angora hair, worn with the ultra-short dresses of current style.

REJOICE!

~Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime columnist for the Southeast Missourian.