My metabolism is truly failing me. In an effort to start the year off as a healthy adult, I decided to get my fitness on, I've signed up for a gym and received a gift of three months of unlimited hot yoga.
However, one problem I've run into is that I will run out of sports bras before the end of the week. Hot yoga makes like a muhfugger.
I had time last night before my Pilates class so I decided to visit TJ MAXX to check out some fitness gear to hold my lady bits together.
The first thing I see when I enter the store is active wear. Probably to cater to the crowds of people who have made resolutions to get in shape. I quickly made my way to the clearance section, and grabbed a couple of sports bras in from the small section and rushed into the fitting room to try on the goods.
And of course, nothing ever goes my way. I pulled the first bra over my head and it got stuck. At my elbows. No! I thought. Sports bras are supposed to be a little tighter. I can do this!!! But I couldn't. So I tried putting my head through first. That worked with a lot of squeezing my shoulders together. Then I slipped my left arm while leaving dry scrape marks all over my arm. I worked my right arm through and bam!!! Mission completed. Except that instead of going over my breasticles, the band of the sports bra was squishing down on the top of my chest. Making my lady honkers dangle like a old, sad dry milk cow's working goods. But not to fear!!! All I had to do, was pull the band down past the girls and all would be well. But it wasn't. Because there was still massive underboobage. Massive.
Might I add...I am not endowed with any curvy upper body parts. But because there was sooo much underboobage, it looked like legit funbags.
And then I started thinking...why wasn't all my lady bits fitting in? I checked the sales tag on the bra. XS. And not the SMALL I assumed it was because it was in the SMALL section.
The hell. If you're an XS, do you even need a sports bra? What are you trying to hold together?!?! Lol...kidding. Butnotreally.
By this point, all circulation had been cut off from my torso. My toes were going numb. The skin area around my shoulders and chest were turning a palish blue. And I was suffocating. And my norks were spilling out all over place. And I was sweating. Everywhere.
My left arm went through the arm hole and was free. I forced it to pull the other half of the bra over my body. Then I heard it. The sound of the beginning of death for all articles of clothing. Ripping. From the seams. Slowly. And then I stopped.
I didn't want to be that customer. Nope.
I worked my arm back into the bra and wiped the sweat from my back and stomach. After catching my breath and cooling down, I restarted my escape plan by pulling the bra over my head.
This is literally what went through my mind: (I'm really my own best cheerleader.)
Underboobage. Again. OK. This is a great start.
Nipples. Nice. They haven't been sliced off during the rescue.
And then ripping at the seams again. So I moved slowly...slowly...
Rest.
Shoulders are pinched together in the back and breathing is short and painful.
Bra has made it over the top of the lady lumps, pushing on them to look like two dangly water balloons.
Arms are up in the arm and I can no longer feel my fingertips.
I see stars. And I feel lightheaded.
And then...without any limbs to help guide the rest of the bra off my body, I was stuck.
Arms fully extended in the air.
Stuck.
Have you guys ever tightly tied a straw off with a rubber band? I used to do it all the time to see how much liquid I could suck up. I know. I was such a cool kid. And most if the time, little to no liquid that could free itself from the straw. That or I was really bad at sucking.
And that was exactly how I felt that night in the first stall of the changing room of that TJ MAXX. Like all those straws I once choked off for my entertainment. Stuck. And helpless.
I couldn't even rip it off at that point because my arms couldn't reach that far down. And so I caved. I needed help. EXCUSE ME?!? IS ANYBODY THERE??? HELLOOOOO??? CAN SOMEBODY HELP ME?
I felt more vulnerable than that one time when my mom and I stopped at a rest stop late one night on a drive from Minnesota to New York. My mom had finished peeing so she left me to finish my numero deuce. Except that I didn't realize that the stall I was in had no toilet paper. And of course the rest stop had to be out in the middle of nowhere during the dead of the night with nobody else was in the women's restroom. And so after making sure there weren't any silent patrons, I quickly ran into the next stall. And cleaned myself. If you haven't run from one stall to the next with your pants at your knees with a dirty butthole, you have never felt true terror. (LOL okay, I'm exaggerating.)
Except that I couldn't help myself. I couldn't open the fitting room door because my arms were too busy being stuck. I tried kneeling down but of course the fitting room had to be New York-sized (small).
After what seemed like hours (read: a minute), another customer responded.
Her: Are you OK?
Me: No...
Her: (Irritated) What's wrong?
Me: (Meekly) I'm stuck...
Her: What? Where? How?
Me: (Embarrassed) In this sports bra I thought was my size but turns out it isn't.
Her: (Commanding) Open the door.
Me: (Stupidly) I can't.
Her: (Irritated, again.) What?
Me: (Even more stupidly) I'm stuck. My arms can't reach the handle.
Her: (Defeated)..........I'm going to get the attendant.
Me: Yeah...ok.
When the attendant arrived, she asked the same questions as the customer. She crawled under the door (and barely made it through too). I stood in the corner like an orphaned and wet, exposed baby mouse: half nekkid with only my tights to shield my shameful body. Was this what Adam and Eve felt after they ate fruit from the tree of knowledge and hid from God???
She looked at me pitifully. To make space for the both of us, she unlocked and opened the door. The other customer who initially responded to my pleas for rescue stood on the other side. <i>Well, why did you have to go and do that?<\i> She asked.
I tried explaining but it didn't matter. Because the all the damage in the world had been done. I stood before two complete stranger women, semi-bare chested...with my bosoms exposed, arms in the air, sweat gushing out of my pores and down my back and stomach. Ugh, probably the most humiliated I've ever felt...ever.
"I guess I'm going to have to cut it off," she said after trying to pull the bra.
"I guess you gotta do what you gotta do..."
She started snipping away at the bra. Once she was done, my flesh slowly regained its color and I wiped off dewiness from my body. And then I slowly backed into the fitting room and hid my abused cans behind my bloodless arms.
And then I went home and ate a pack of ramen because that was my workout. And also because I was already 20 minutes late to the class. Fail.