My Cups Overfloweth

How on earth can a woman live 51 years and still have no idea how to adjust her bra properly?   I'm not lying when I say that the thing I wore today had more in common with spray paint  than it did with an i-beam or trestle.  Actually, it was like I'd tossed a light cardigan across my fair moonbeams, something to take away the chill.  That's how impractical this thing was.

Halfway through the day, I dodged into the women's bathroom and messed with the straps a bit, hoisting a little here, cinching a bit there.  Alack, it was all for naught, as my sad sacks just kept their eyes pointing downward, drenched in peri-menopausal shame.

Frankly, I shouldn't be surprised.  Truth is, I have never had a good relationship with bras, dating back to a disastrous first date with one in a Miller & Paine dressing room back in '73.  The evidence mounting, my mom had taken me to the store, where they had experts who knew how to fit a girl.  I fumbled with the first one she gave me, eventually putting it on backwards, because it was a lot easier to hook that way.  Ten minutes later, the "expert" nearly ruined my young life, flinging open the door of my dressing room, thereby revealing all my innermost secrets, much to the horror of a passing boy from my 5th-grade class. 

As someone who kept tampons in her socks well into her 30s, and still chooses a practical pair of briefs over those newfangled thongs every time, I have never swooned over a lacy bra.  Not once.  True, I nearly passed out in a Victoria's Secret about a year ago, but it wasn't from excitement.  More like from the paroxysms of sheer terror and befuddlement that swept over me.
  
Girls bring their boyfriends to that place!  And they all act like it's normal! 

I suppose I'll give my sad, little bra another chance, come tomorrow morning.  I may even fiddle with it a bit, trying to figure out which is better--to lift or to separate, for, surely, this thing cannot do both at once.  And I'll probably grab a cardigan--a real, full-sized one--to toss over my shoulders, not only for a little warmth but also as a bit of a buffer for the outside world. 

Some things, after all, are hard to prepare for.