It’s winter and I’ve put on a little extra poundage. While my adult children eat like well-honed athletic specimens, I defend to the death, my right to eat bread. And anything else I fancy. I’ve just eaten a Whittakers Peanut Bar in three mouthfuls, but… it was one of those mini ones and when I opened it up it’d been damaged by the sun so that’s a few calories that weren’t available.
So, let’s just say for arguments sake, that eating peanuts makes you put on weight and that sitting writing at a desk isn’t best done with an underwire bra. To sort one of those things I decided to buy a new bra at Lingerie on Barrington. I am not a new customer. I have an index card in their system (its a box) with every bra I’ve purchased since my mother’s neighbour told me during drinks on the deck one day, that I was wearing the wrong size and she could do something about it. Well do she did! Fitted to a tee with a couple of underwired accessories – one of which I still have in my drawer. It’s the ‘if-all-else-fails-I-know-this-one-won’t’-bra. And it’s a black one too so it’s never gone grey.
Deciding today was the day I’d deal with discomfort, I walked into my local lingerie shop to find a man deep in conversation with one of the sales staff. He was not a hunky, spunky model type. More your hairy-eared, unashamed to be carrying everything in a supermarket bag type of man. He wasn’t obviously transitioning and from a snippet of overheard conversation I decided he’d mistaken the lingerie shop for the barbers where I hear men go now for a bit of mental TLC. I sidled up to the counter and in pretty much the tone of someone sussing out a dealer for a bit of the green stuff, I whispered ‘Where are your bra’s with no wires?’ A very discreet woman led me to the wall of elasticity. Now I have yet to meet a woman who can look at fifty different styles of bras in varying shades of mute, and go – that’s the one for me! Luckily the woman’s hand alighted on just the right thing. I assumed she had that same Xray vision the neighbour had and had already decided the size and product number as I walked in the door.
I slid into the change room and shed my skin, all the while listening to a retelling of how the poor man at the counter had once been driven to standing on the edge of a cliff. Trying on the first bra offered me a modecum of understanding his situation. I wasn’t the same woman I’d been six months ago and I needed a different (NO! it was not smaller okay?) size. But oh the comfort when the girls slid into their pockets and I bent down and instead of being greeted by wire, I met gravity. I’m wearing it now. I had to stuff a tissue up the back because the tag is a bit scratchy and that made me remember the first bra’s I ever had. Mum had winged it on the size and they folded over at the ends. There was room for improvement back then and I can honestly say I’ve taken full advantage of each and every opportunity.
The man went off muttering about funerals and my new bra was added to the system. I was so delighted with the ease of the transaction I walked round the corner and bought a tee shirt for a hundred dollars. Of course I didn’t! It was $99.90 but there is no price on an essential item of clothing when your husband has just sold another car. And you need to go up a size.
Robyn Anderson 