In honor of the Hero's birthday, which was yesterday, we will present some embarrassing stories about him. No, not really! That would be mean. And also he would get back at me by posting embarrassing stories about me, some of which he has happily gleaned by grilling various family members over the years. We operate under something of a Mutually Assured Destruction agreement, whereby we both know that if one of us launches a tale, the other is sure to come back with something even more embarrassing. Eventually things would escalate quite badly, until we were relating stories with so little relation to reality that even the producers of some reality show would reject them as a story line.
Another woman has appeared in the Hero's life. It happened quite unexpectedly, and I doubt we will ever be the same. The woman is short, opinionated, and a snappy dresser. She is even, upon an extremely short acquaintance, telling him how to dress.
Okay, so technically she is paid to tell him how to dress, although not by us. If anyone is going to get paid for that sort of thing, it will be me, thank you.
We had gone to the mall, one of the Hero's once-every-five-years trip there, in order to procure him some pants that did not look as if he could stash a couple of TVs in them. That was MY objective. His was to grab the first pair of pants he saw, pay for them, and then sprint back home so that he wouldn't miss the Super Bowl, which was roughly 32 hours away.
And then SHE intervened. SHE was a saleswoman of whom we asked, in our ignorance, if she had a pair of a certain jean in a certain size.
We left 30 hours later, having learned that we know nothing about clothes, and that the Hero, at least, has been gadding about all these years under the pretense that he was wearing the right size. SHE set us both straight.
"Belts," she said, sniffily, "are for decoration only. They are not supposed to be needed. If you need a belt, your pants are too big."
Off came the Hero's belt, and he went happily down a size in the waist. But she was far from finished with us.
"Clothes that fit right fit close to the body," she instructed. "They do not hang out here or there. I have private clients for whom I do their entire wardrobe. And if I were going to do more of you," she said to the Hero, looking him up and down, "I would definitely get rid of the coat. It is way too big. And your tee shirt -- ridiculously huge."
As she talked we both felt as if we were growing smaller and smaller, while our clothes were getting larger and larger. We felt that under her scrutiny we were children playing dress-up with our parents' clothes, such was their ill fit.
"But what if you have some part of your body that doesn't, uh, look so good in tighter clothes?" the Hero asked.
This launched her on a soliloquy of celebration of the human form. "Everyone has something they worry about," she said. "Big tummy, big fanny, big feet...when your clothes fit properly, it doesn't matter if you have a big something. It's part of you -- there is no need to hide it."
We had a vision of the whole world suddenly letting go, yielding to acceptance of their less favored body parts, and vaunting it all. We were not sure the whole world was ready for this.
She turned her attention to the Hero's face. "Even the glasses would go," she said, stripping away the last vestige of hope we had that we had done something right.
"The glasses stay," I wanted to growl, because I had picked them out. But I didn't growl, because she would have made a snarky remark about MY glasses, and I would have had to agree with her there. And I did not want to agree with her.
An earlier customer, she said, had come in for a pair of pants and had, after her ministrations, left with a complete outfit. We felt fortunate to escape the store with slightly less than this.
That night the Hero tried out a look that she had casually suggested, minus the loose tie she had championed. He does have his limits. He looked very nice. As much as it grieved me that someone else has succeeded in changing his mind about clothes where I, who have labored for so long, have failed, I was grateful to her.
But never in a million years will I let her know that.
2 comments:
Oh my, at first I thought that you were referring to me, "The woman was short, opinionated", but when I saw that she was also a "snappy dresser", I knew that you were definitely not referring to me. Anyway, I think that I would like to meet her, so that she can work her magic on me and my area(s) that I try not call attention to.
I will be happy to tell you where she may be found. But before you go, perhaps you'd better clean out your closet and drawers to make room for new stuff!
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