SPANX

Oprah swore by them. In fact, every woman that had been a guest on Oprah swore by them. Not that Birdie subscribed to Oprah-osophy, but she was curious to find out if what everyone said was true. Exercise wasn’t getting it done for Birdie, and neither was dieting. Of course, Dr. Oz and all the other “experts” said you had to make a lifestyle change, and Birdie couldn’t think of a bigger lifestyle change than this one. After years of letting it all just bulge, bubble, and sag, she was planning to corral her body of clay into an undergarment that was touted to banish all  bulges and present a smooth, flawless figure to the unsuspecting world.

Birdie enlisted her friend Kelly to go with her to try on some Spanx. It would have been unadvisable to go alone. Maybe even dangerous. Birdie recalled the time she had been shopping for bras and had gotten entangled with a sports bra and couldn’t get it off.The panic had been frightening. She wasn’t flexible enough to perform the contortions needed to extricate herself, and it was only through prayer and possibly blacking out for a short time that she had found herself rid of the elastic bands of horror.

In order to cover all her bases, so to speak, Birdie chose a pair of Spanx that started just below the bosom and went all the way to the tops of the knees. She took them out of the box and marveled at the light weight fabric. It was nothing like the industrial strength material she had been expecting, but one thing had her worried. The width of the garment was only a fraction of her width. She checked the box again and sure enough, the chart where her weight and height intersected, advised that she wear the size she had selected. Birdie hoped that this foundation garment was going to wrangle her wayward bulk into a disciplined form. Where it was going to put all the unhampered flesh that was now lolling about on the periphery of her present under-garments was a mystery, but she had confidence in the miracle of science.

Birdie put in first one foot and then the other, and began pulling up the Spanx. Everything was going fine except for the light headed-ness caused by having to breathe while leaning over her belly. Then came the first roadblock. She got the Spanx as far as her knees, and she started to suspect that there might not be enough expansion left in the Lycra to go any farther. Her knees had never been so close together. With Kelly spotting her like a gymnastics coach, Birdie managed to pull the Spanx up over her thighs, hips, and both bellies. (The one below her belly button and the one above.)

After fanning herself with the package to relieve an exertion-induced hot flash, Birdie looked at herself in the mirror. The garment wasn’t uncomfortable. She could breathe. Nothing was escaping. Everything was smooth. So she put on her clothes to see how the world would view her. No lumps or bumps, but she still looked thick and chunky. She had been hoping for svelte and willowy. The return wasn’t worth the investment.  And the sweat equity? If Birdie wanted that much exercise, she’d –well, she’d exercise.

And what if she had to go to the restroom? Birdie examined the garment to see if the designer had taken that into consideration. Sure enough, there was a pee hole in the crotch. That is, if you could manage to pee into a thimble. A hole about the size of a quarter was the concession to bathroom breaks. It made you wonder what kind of bladder Oprah had.

Birdie and the Eye Patch

 

Birdie had always wanted to be eccentric. Just a little eccentric. Not so much that her children would start looking into elder care, but enough to be interesting. The kind of eccentricity that sent the message–”I’m not in a rut. I don’t follow the crowd unless I like where the crowd is headed. And what’s more, I may not do what the crowd does once we get there. Probably won’t, as a matter of fact.”

Birdie felt she had the soul of an eccentric, but what was the point of being an eccentric if no one noticed? Just thinking like one didn’t always get you the kind of attention that a sincere eccentric wanted. You had to look like one so people would see you. Then if you were actually doing or saying something eccentric, it wouldn’t be wasted. Birdie knew for a fact that you could be eccentric all day long, and if nobody knew about it, you might just as well be normal, average, commonplace, humdrum. Sort of like that tree that fell in the forest when no one was there to hear it. What difference did it make whether it made any noise or not?

“What could she do,” Birdie thought, “to stake her claim to eccentricity?” People, in general, were doing such crazy things, that it was hard for an eccentric who was just starting out to make any real, visible mark. Furthermore, it was a fine line to walk. She didn’t want to be pointed at–just noticed with a bit of positive interest. Maybe even avoided by those whom she wished to be avoided by.

Not having had much practice at being overtly eccentric, she wanted a baby-steps approach because she feared things could go terribly wrong. You could inadvertently cross a line and be labeled a “nut”.

A parrot on her shoulder? A jeweled eye patch? No, that seemed more like a pirate, although, pirates were decidedly eccentric. A silver handled walking stick? A t-shirt that said “I’m eccentric”?

Maybe she’d just choose something simple but distinctive–like telling the truth—and the jeweled eye patch.

 

 

MIS-SENT

Her package was supposed to have arrived by the 13th, and here it was already the 20th. Birdie had looked on-line to track it, and the official USPS site showed the package had been making its slow but steady progress toward Birdie’s mailbox just fine until it reached the handoff in the relay which was approximately 250 miles distant. It had been only a day away from delivery.

Then the cryptic notation: MIS-SENT. A single word. The USPS was being rather guarded concerning this turn of events. Apparently, they weren’t willing to take Birdie into their confidence. There was no information pointing to where it had been MIS-SENT. It could be anywhere. Phoenix? Zimbabwe? Delaware? Would Birdie’s package be delivered to a woman on the Minnesota prairie? Would a lonely farm wife, hungry for mail, rip into the package before realizing it had been MIS-SENT? Would the lonely farm wife puzzle over why she had received unsolicited Beauty Behold Facial Moisturizer and Wrinkle Erasing Serum from Youthanizer Pharmaceutical? Or would she simply see it as a cosmic gift? A gift to brighten her lonely, austere life. Would she rush inside to her dressing table, gaze into the mirror, smooth on the miraculous cream and see instantaeous results? A tightening of skin that had been lax, a vibrancy to skin that had been sallow, a youthful dewey glow that replaced the dry skin of a middle-aged woman who had spent too many hours in the sun and wind and intense temperatures of Minnesota?

Birdie could only hope the lonely Minnesota farm wife would notice the mistake before the mail carrier drove away. That she would say something like, “Why, Tolly, looks like this package has been MIS-SENT.”

And then the USPS would decide to right the wrong and put the package on a special jet to Birdie’s post office. That was Birdie’s bottle of youthful, dewey glow. Let the lonely Minnesota farm wife get her own.

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This is my entry for this week’s Trifecta Writing Challenge. www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/ using the 3rd definition of the word confidence.

Love Means Never Having to Say “We’re Out of Ice.”

Sam is a stainless steel, French door, bottom freezer, 28.5 cubic foot capacity, gorgeous hunk of home appliance with a sexy blue-light LED display above his ice and water dispenser. He came into my life one Sunday after my old beater of a fridge gave up the ghost on a Friday night and started spoiling food on Saturday afternoon with no hope of a repairman until Monday.

Gerald and I had gone to Sears to “just look” at refrigerators, and there he was–the most handsome, virile, exciting refrigerator I had ever laid my eyes on. He was so clean, so roomy, so conveniently appointed. He was on sale. He was in stock.

So, Gerald strapped him in the back of the pick-up, drove him home, wrestled him through the back door–the only door that would accommodate his broad shoulders–slid him in place, and plugged him in.

It was no surprise when my friend, Maggie, as she swung wide his doors to admire him that first morning she made his acquaintance, said,”Well, hello! Good morning,” in her most “come hither” manner. I later realized Maggie had received a call from her husband on her bluetooth just as she opened the refrigerator doors and was using that sultry tone to greet him. But it wouldn’t have been over the top if she had been responding to Sam, what with the icy blue gaze of his interior display lights, easily accessible crispers, and inviting deli drawer. I know. I’ve had my moments.

I have lived with Sam for a little over a year and a half now, and although I won’t say the honeymoon is over, I have discovered some of his quirks that annoy me.  For instance, he thinks we should drink filtered water, which I guess is a good idea if you don’t have the sparkling well water we have. We don’t want to filter it.  But I can’t explain that to Sam. He came with a filter, and he insisted that the water that he served ran through it. So, now that the filter has expired, Sam is disgruntled and shows his disapproval of our drinking habits with an angry red icon of an unhappy filter on his display panel. I am ignoring it. I won’t get into that argument with him

The only serious rift in our relationship comes when there is an interruption in power. When that happens, I unplug Sam for ten minutes, per the owner’s manual, so that he can gather his wits. Here’s where it goes wrong.  Sometimes Sam sulks for as long as 24 to 48 hours, all the while flashing zeroes at me. As long as he is flashing, he can’t deliver. That is, he can’t dispense ice–cubes or crushed. I’m sorry, but no amount of pretty-boy good looks can make up for that.

Birdie and the Friendly Skies

Before getting on an airplane, Birdie always prayed. She prayed for protection, that the plane would get to its destination without any mishaps, and that she wouldn’t have to sit next to anyone who had B. O., smelled like cigarettes, was obnoxious, or was wearing too much cologne. She figured if she was a better Christian, she would pray to sit next to someone to whom she could witness, but all her hardened heart desired was to have an empty seat next to her or failing that, to have it filled with someone who didn’t invade too much of her personal space.

She still remembered that trip from St. Louis to Denver, when she was trapped in the window seat, her one-year-old son on her lap, with a loquacious drunk stuffed in the seat next to her. As he drank his 9:00 A.M. screwdriver, he complimented Birdie on how well behaved her baby was, admitting that he didn’t have any kids “that he knew of. Ha! Ha!”

“Thank goodness no one is strapped with that burden,” thought Birdie, as she was smiling like an idiot and thanking him for the compliment. Wouldn’t want to be impolite to the drunk.

He had just come from a wedding reception that had lasted all night and was feeling expansive and philosophic, which she had to admit was better than being an angry drunk. It was just that a drunk of any kind, in the close confines of coach seating, was never pleasant.

As he downed his second screwdriver–”Have to get my morning orange juice, ha, ha.”–he began regaling Birdie with his philosophy of life. It turned out to be a Kenny Rogers song. “You gotta know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em,” he told her, nodding his head and slurring his words.

“Good advice,” thought Birdie, as she mentally finished the lyric. “Know when to walk away; know when to run.” Unfortunately, this credo was not easily adhered to when one was at 30,000 feet next to a drunk whose tray table was down and seat back reclined.

He went on to tell her that it was important to “Go for the gusto, and grab the gold ring, because you only go around once.” It seemed to Birdie as if she were going around and around. Definitely more than once, as he repeated his theme to her over and over again, wanting her to grasp the profundity of his “words to live by.”

“Even more ridiculous,” thought Birdie, “was my response.”  She had continued to nod and smile like a half-wit, pretending to be interested, maybe even indicating that she agreed. She was saddled with this compulsion to be polite regardless of the circumstances. Didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. Didn’t want to make anyone feel awkward. Don’t hang up on the telephone solicitor. Wouldn’t be courteous. Pretend you don’t see the neighbor having dinner with the attractive woman who is not his wife. Might embarrass him. Let the obtrusive drunk spew his blather all over you and your baby. It wouldn’t be nice to ignore him.

“After all, it’s nice to be nice,” thought Birdie. “But that’s about all it’s got going for it.”

 

Birdie and the Alien Blues

“You can say things to a girlfriend,” thought Birdie, “that if you said them to your husband, he would just look at you as if you were an alien from another planet.”

He wouldn’t begin to understand, but it wouldn’t keep him from interpreting it as an assessment concerning his lack of manly charms, manly prowess, manly good looks, manly business acumen, or just general manliness. At that point, you have to either leave him thinking that you find him less than manly as a result of your saying something like, “It’s Monday again. (Sigh!)” or you can explain until your head falls off, that you are suffering from a slight case of the blues, and this general malaise has been settling down over you for a while, but you didn’t want to say anything because you assumed you would get over it and anyway, you knew you didn’t have a reason in the world to feel down and felt a little guilty even thinking that way as your life was really 200% wonderful–more wonderful than anybody else’s life that you knew about–and so what was there to feel down about, for Pete’s sake? And furthermore, you hated it when other people said they were bored because you always thought, well, do something different then. Quit being bored. But here you were. just a little bored with your life. (How horrible to say it out loud.) Not that you wanted anything less than you had, God forbid, but you just yearned for something different, and you felt powerless to change it. You knew that you were a pitiful, pathetic slug. And then he would finally understand. He would realize it was because you thought he lacked manliness.Not so with a girlfriend. She would listen and say, ” I know. I’ve felt like that, too. And I think my butt’s too big.”

Oh, me, too!” you reply, delighting in the comfort of hearing your native tongue. And then you plan to go for a Coke or browsing antiques stores, or for a walk, or anything. It doesn’t really have to be different. It just has to be something to do together so you can talk.

“Of course,” thought Birdie, ” you don’t want your husband to say the things your girlfriend would say. That would just be weird. You want him to hug you and say, “It’s going to be ok, Babe. Have you lost weight? You look thinner.”

Birdie and Spring

Birdie could hear the Canada geese honking as they flew in to do their reconnaissance of the pond. She always welcomed the return of Mr. and Mrs. Goose. It meant that spring was on its way.

“But that isn’t accurate,” she thought, and she always liked to be accurate, even when musing within herself. It wasn’t really spring she was looking forward to. Summer was what Birdie longed for.

Spring wasn’t as idyllic as it was cracked up to be. Not with its mud and wind and the fitful changing of it’s mind between warm pleasant days and rude freezing temperatures. But she welcomed it just the same, because it was the prelude to summer.

Birdie guessed that spring really had to be the way it was here where she lived in her Colorado mountain valley. At an elevation of 8,000 feet, winter was not going to meekly step off stage. A certain amount of shaking and flinging was in order. Some upheaval. A strategy that included warm persuasion one day and the cold shoulder the next. Here in the Rockies, spring was not a young girl in an organdy dress with violets in her hair. She was a raging wife who has come home to find her house neglected. She throws open the windows and doors to let the wind blow through, displacing the gloom and dirt that are the ash of winter’s fires gone out.

“Oh, my,” thought Birdie. “That’s a bit too poetic for this early in the morning. And all because I heard the geese. Well, that’s spring for you. If nothing else, it’s dramatic.”

Birdie, Seymour, and Sagging

Birdie had never taken a physics class, but as near as she could remember, the law of gravity was still supposed to be in effect. So what was the explanation for how young men kept their pants from falling down around their ankles when they wore the waistband just below their buttocks? Was that area on a young man’s body some kind of fashionista Bermuda Triangle that suspended physical laws?

It was out in front of that shop where one could buy t-shirts that had a picture of the Statue of Liberty holding a revolver instead of a torch. Birdie and Gerald couldn’t help but notice him. Seymour Butts was draped over the newspaper machine studying his smart phone, presenting his backside to anyone passing by. 

Birdie had seen this style before, but never this completely. Up until now, she had only concluded that the jeans sat way below the waist because the back pockets were situated on the backs of their knees. But now, Birdie saw the facts. There was the waist band and belt circling the top of Seymour’s thighs right under his Hanes covered rump. Birdie immediately had questions.

Was leaning against the newspaper machine keeping the jeans in place, and would Seymour have to grab them to keep them from plummeting to the floor if he had to move suddenly? She’d seen guys like Seymour doing the penguin walk to keep their pants in place. What if they had to run? Birdie thought they pictured themselves as part of the “gangster” subculture, but didn’t gangsters need to be able to make fast get-aways?

Back when Birdie wore panty hose, having the crotch at knee level set off the alarm system in her comfort zone. Did Seymour not have that built-in alarm system? Or was his comfort level just calibrated differently? She knew for a fact that waists were not situated where they used to be. They used to be right about belly button level, but now, for most young girls, waists hovered around the hip bones and contributed to plumber’s-crack chic.

Another question Birdie had was who was the first guy? Who was the original Seymour? She had read that this style had originated in prison with oversized uniforms issued without belts. Birdie preferred to imagine that the original Seymour’s jeans slid down because he had lost weight, and he hadn’t been able to get any new jeans in his new slim size, and he hadn’t had time to punch a new hole in his belt and, LaFonda, the girl he had a crush on, said, “Looking good, Daddy!”, so he decided sagging was going to be his new look, and the style spread from there. But that was probably just because she had a preoccupation with fantasies about losing weight.

“As long as I can get my jeans up over my hips and fastened around my version of a waistline,” thought Birdie, ” I’m sticking with that.”

Birdie and the Bad-uns

The dogs were barking again. Focused on something in the distance, they stood atop the snow bank at the edge of Birdie’s circle drive and warned away the “bad-uns”. Birdie looked out the window,  through the trees, searching for their concern–for what was motivating their protective reaction. She couldn’t see anything that would warrant the “don’t come any closer” sound they were making.

The dogs and Birdie went through this ritual almost every morning. She figured they had detected a “bad-un” way over there, beyond the pond, among the trees. Perhaps a neighbor’s dog making his morning rounds, marking territory that was clearly not his own,  and since the deep snow made it hard to pursue him, they used their “Get out of Dodge” bark. The problem for Birdie was that they kept barking long after the intruder had disappeared.

“Maybe they’re boasting, possibly flinging insults at the cowardly retreating enemy, or threatening anyone else who might be considering the same trespass,” thought Birdie. But she suspected that it was more of an “I’ve started barking and I can’t quit” kind of thing. So, Birdie would go over to the window and tap on the glass to get their attention. That would hit their reset buttons, and she would have peace for about fifteen minutes or so, until the next “bad-un” came through.

Birdie and the Golden Arches

Bringing a hidden candy bar to the movies didn’t ruffle Birdie’s conscience at all. Technically, she knew it was against the rules, but she felt justified in doing it when admission was so pricey, and the cost of candy at the concession stand would have paid for a Caribbean cruise for Gerald and herself. It gave her a bit of “civil disobedience”/”free the masses” sort of feeling when she sneaked candy into the movies. And besides, once she had seen a guy bring in a full meal from Taco Bell and eat it while waiting for the previews. She would never do anything like that. Of course, she wouldn’t.

Then came breakfast at McDonald’s on Sundays. Gerald and Birdie hadn’t started out wrong. They would both order sausage McMuffin meals and eat them while sitting in their favorite booth, enjoying the the sun that came through the only window on the east side of the restaurant. However, one Sunday, Gerald mentioned that he really liked having a pastry with his coffee, so they started trying other places like the bakery, the French cafe, and finally the college-student pizza hangout where, surprisingly, they made the most delectable sticky buns and fresh fruit croissants. Birdie and Gerald tried eating at the pizza place, but it was dark and cold, and they missed their sunny booth and cheap senior drinks with refills. So, Gerald came up with a plan. He would carry the pastries into McDonald’s and secure the sunny booth, while Birdie would order the McMuffins and senior drinks, being careful not to confess to the 16 year old taking her order, that they had brought in contraband food and were intending to eat it while enjoying discount beverages courtesy of McDonald’s. It made Birdie a little uncomfortable at first, but it all went so smoothly week after week, and whenever her conscience tried to speak up, Birdie would just give it a bite of her McMuffin.

This Sunday, after they had made their pastry run, Gerald suggested they get a burrito at Sonic. When Birdie realized that Gerald intended to continue on to McDonald’s with the pastries AND the burrito, her discomfort quotient rose to the alarm level. She was sure that her aura looked like a flashing neon sign that said, “Food Smuggler and Sneak”.

As she walked to the counter to order the drinks, she had trouble maintaining eye contact with the young order taker. She brought the drinks to their booth, grabbed a discarded Sunday newspaper, and sat across from Gerald as he began digging into his burrito. Birdie ate her croissant without looking up from the useless news articles and ads before her. The pastry lost its sweetness. She didn’t want a refill. There was no sunshine.