WE ARE WATCHING. PLEASE STOP TRYING TO SQUEEZE YOUR FAT ASS INTO OUR PETITE JEANS.

My body is like a ball of yeast dough that’s been rising for the past 63 years.   It gets bigger and bigger and when I move it flops into any open area available without my knowledge or consent.    This is NOT my body.    It’s not even body shaped.   I look like a beach ball with a head and sneakers.   Sneakers that are a size 6 extra wide with a pair of arch support insoles because NOW I have bunions and my arches have gone missing.   I’m guessing they got fed up with carrying around the ever shifting mountain of body weight and and said, “Oh HELL no!  We’re outa here!”

Slowly over the years I have become a “special needs” clothing and shoes shopper.   My blouses must have three-quarter length sleeves so my arm flags can’t escape and knock something over when I wave hello or the wind is blowing.   Additionally, said blouse, must be long enough to conceal frontal butt…a.k.a. mid-life chocolate lovers belly.   But not too long because I’m five foot two inches and have no legs to speak of.   Pants must be short legged with lots of thigh breathing space and preferably have a draw string or some elastic in the back.   They must be slimming to the eye but maintain tummy expandability for those bloated gassy days when I eat cheap Mexican food or any type of cabbage product.   Any shoes I wear must be designed as if they were being created for a freakishly large goose.  I submit you would find very little difference between my footprint and that of any water foul.   Consequently,  shopping has become a migraine waiting to happen.

A few years ago I was trying on pants in one of those curtained dressing rooms.   You know the ones where lots of folks go into one big room, step inside a cubicle made of fabric hanging on a rod and pray a stiff breeze doesn’t blow what little is left of their dignity to hell?   The sales girl had suggested I would look really cute in this particular pair of pants that just happened to be two sizes smaller than what I wore.   When I told her they were the wrong size she said, “Oh they’re made really big.  I’m sure these will fit you.”    She was wrong.   I wiggled and sweated and pulled till my arm muscles were sore and could only get them half way up my thighs.  So back off they came….only ….no they didn’t.   They literally would not come up or go down.  I’m telling you, I was EXHAUSTED!   So I did what I always do and leaned against the wall for support.   And fell through the cloth door into the middle of the dressing area at the feet of three ladies who were here visiting from Georgia.   I laid there for a minute staring at the ceiling.   I don’t remember thinking anything at all other than, “Lord in Heaven it feels good to lay down.”

“Sugah, are you ok?”  The twenty-something tight body asked.

Oh, dear Gawd in Heaven, make it stop.

In the end it took two of the three of them to help me get the pants back off.   And that’s when I began on-line shopping.   Which I’ve been doing for the past few years.   On-line shopping has been nice but over time I’ve found I need more categories to narrow my search down to anything remotely reasonable.   And now they want me to measure myself to more accurately select size.   Have you measured your butt in inches lately?   Don’t.   It’s traumatic and will send you flying to the Nutella for a spoon of, “Woe is me.”

I am down to one bra that kinda fits but not really.   I’ve grown out of all but two pair of pants (only I dropped ice cream sprinkles in the car so now one pair has yellow, orange, and pinks spots on the crotch…which I guess means technically I have one pair of pants).   And I dunno…is that a sentence?

Where was I?   Oh, the only shirts I’m wearing these days have slogans on them or they’re hospital scrubs.   This is a record.  I have never porked up so much I couldn’t  fit into my shirts before.   There should be some kind of award for that.   Ice cream maybe?   So today I sucked it up, grabbed the bottle of excedrin and set out for the mall.   You can’t hide forever, right?   I gathered up a cart full of pants, shirts, bras and shuffled into the dressing room.   As soon as I started taking my clothes off and saw that lonely worn out pink bra with the torn strap, my granny panties with the elastic coming through, and those massive rolls of chicken white skin I knew….nothing else I would see today would be as bad as this.    I stood there staring in utter disbelief.  I tried to manually push my stomach back into my body.   I made disgusted faces at myself.   Then I glanced up and saw the sign.   “THIS DRESSING ROOM IS BEING MONITORED”.    What?   Wait….what?    “MOTHER FUCKER!”