I stopped into a store the other day hoping to find a bathing suit that covers everything it needs to and a little more.  My family is getting together for the July 4^th holiday and I don’t want to ruin their picnic due to my attire or lack thereof.  I was worried about finding something that fit when I should have been worried about something else.

I searched through the $24.99 one-piece options at T.J.Maxx and found nine suits to try on.  That’s a record number for me, but I wasn’t real hopeful.  They often look much better on the skinny hanger that you can barely see from the side than on me. When I reached the dressing room, there was a line. I don’t like to wait and besides, I am not a shopper, but I needed a suit so I had no choice. I considered swinging over the men’s side, like I did at a few stadium concerts in the past,  but decided I didn’t have enough to drink at lunch to pull that off. So, I joined the line of ladies.

The routine was a familiar one. As a fitting room door opened and a try-er-on-er came out, the next one entered. Why is it called a fitting room, anyway? Most of the stuff I take in there doesn’t fit. And what happened to the lady who used to wait outside your door to go get you a different size or color?  Yeah, I know, she left many years ago and boy, I sure miss her. It is such a pain to get undressed, redressed, undressed, and redressed that I’ve considered running out into the general population in my tighty-whities in order to grab another size off the rack. Keep that in mind if you ever open up a store; not that I might run around in my tighty-whities, but that good customer service includes a fitting room attendant who will actually help you find something that fits.

So, where was I? Oh, doors opening and closing; sounds like the usual routine, right?  Well, it was, until ‘she’ opened her door, stepped into the aisle that separated the rooms, and announced in a loud voice, “Do NOT go in there.”  Now, it wasn’t one of my favorites, but in the movie Ace Venture: Pet Detective, Jim Carey made that same announcement upon exiting the bathroom and he ended it with a“Pheeww!” So I started holding my breath and looking for the nearest exit.  “Something big must have went down in that fitting room,” I thought, “perhaps she’s gonna fit in that itsy bitsy teeny weenie yellow polka dot bikini after all.” But before I could get away, she said something that actually was worse than letting something big loose in the fitting room. She said, “My stuff is still in there and I have to go to the bathroom.”  Mind you, she said this as she walked past 10 women waiting in line who thought she already ‘went’. In my 50+ years the unwritten courtesy rule was, you leave your room for any reason, you take all your shit (LOL) with you and get back in line when you’ve finished in the ‘other room’. I thought the woman in front of me was gonna jump her.  Actually, I wanted to jump her. The Stepfordoids  started checking their watches because it was getting close to ‘get your ass home and make dinner’ time. One woman tried to get another to go into the ‘reserved’ room while the real owner took care of business in the room next door.  Wisely, the woman declined and said, ”I don’t need to start no problems in a dressing room.”

Two rounds of undress, dress, undress, dress later, she finally returned to ‘her’ room.  I’m thinking she was certainly full of something, aside from herself.