A Fitting End
by Kathleen Kersch Simandl
What was I THINKING? The only
excuse I can offer for even
going in that store
was that I had time to kill. But, then what
was my excuse for dragging my husband along?
Temporary insanity.
It had to be
that, because it was obvious from seeing the
anorexic twenty year olds grazing the string
bikinis that
this was not a store aimed at
clothing the "full-figured woman."
Regardless, I had just accomplished
losing 25 pounds, and decided
to reward
myself with one of those strappy, clingy, little
black dresses that look so fabulous on those
same anorexic
twenty year olds. Temporary
insanity.
Richard and I picked out a short black
dress that we agreed might
be a suitable
reward, and as I was heading into the dressing
room, the salesgirl sweetly asked, "And, this
one, too?"
-asking me if I'd like to try on a
slinky, long, black panne-velvet dress at the
same time.
Remembering how I'd dressed
totally inappropriately that morning
for trying
on clothes (tight burgundy "sports bra"/crop
top under a huge cotton sweater, nylon
knee-highs under
knit crop pants), I
answered, "Why not?" - figuring I'd have to
strip down to my panties anyway.
It wasn't until the girl helped me to
enter that I noticed the
"dressing room" was
nothing more than an artfully draped folding
screen. But, I'd already gone this far in my
insanity,
so - after removing layer after layer
of clothing and rejecting the short dress as
"too revealing" - I wriggled into
the long
dress which - wonder of wonders FIT.
Well, it "fit" - true, but this dress
looked like I had sprayed
it on! Not flattering
to the woman with remnants of rolls on her
midriff, the woman with less-than-a-
washboard-flat
stomach, definitely not
flattering to MY figure. With considerable
regret, I carefully peeled off the long,
and
expensive, dress. Humbled, I realized that
losing 25 pounds was not going to make me
look 25 years old.
I sorrowfully laid the dress on the single
chair behind the screen (no hooks, of course)
and slowly struggled
back into my ordinary
clothes. Only then - with considerable
chagrin - did I notice the "transparent"
deodorant
that I'd applied that morning laid
out in wide, white bands along the length of
the slinky, black dress.
Quickly wetting the tips of my fingers in
my mouth, I attempted
a hasty cleaning of the
velvet fabric. Then, I discovered that the hem
of the dress had slid into a bucket of
soapy
water! The bucket, which I presumed had
been used for scrubbing the floor that
morning, had been pushed
under that single chair.
In a panic, I snatched the dress up and
squeezed the water out with
the bottom of my
peach-colored cotton sweater. Immediately,
the black stains I'd transferred to my sweater
bloomed
into embarrassing "evidence." But,
using the damp hem of the dress, I was able to
get most of the zebra effect
off, anyway.
Definitely time to get outta' there!
After struggling with and bending the
"door" of the screen the
wrong way, and
almost collapsing the whole wobbly structure,
I finally emerged - anything but triumphant.
Mumbling "Yeah" to the salesgirl's irritating,
assumption:
"Too small?" I rushed to the
door, where my husband was waiting. What
had I been THINKING? Twenty
five pounds
ain't a total body make-over, Girlfriend!
But the capping defeat was when Richard
asked,
" Do you realize that anyone in the store
can see everything behind that screen?" All of
my humiliation hadn't
even been private!
