Friday, August 26, 2016

From A to Denial

My very first post here as Frecklepelt, about 7 1/2 years ago, was about bra shopping. I had just discovered online bra shopping at that time and I've never looked back, on either the shopping thing or the blogging thing.

Before I learned about online bra shopping I would do the depressing store-based routine. Once when Medium Fry was just wee, maybe 4 years old, we were in the lingerie section together and she was thrilled with all the pretty "purses" they had on the racks. She had never seen adorable lacy normal-people bras before - only the enormous, pragmatic feats of structural engineering that inhabited our house - so she completely misinterpreted what all these delicate little padded, quarter-inch-strappy things were.

Eight or so years later, she needed some "purses" of her own and I must confess I was unreasonably excited at the prospect of finally, finally in my life being able to buy heaps of adorable lacy things in all the colours of the rainbow, even if they weren't for me. Sadly, my vicarious "lacy purse" dreams were shattered when I learned that her childhood tastes had evolved to more of a "sports purse" flavour over time. Alas.

But who knows, I thought, my day may yet come. Maybe Small Fry will take up cross-dressing in earnest one day, or I will be afflicted with a terrible wasting disease and wither away to a cup size serviced by the likes of La Senza et al. Anything is possible, right?

I have noticed a strange phenomenon among many parents of 20 and 30-somethings whereby they go to bed one evening fretting about their child getting knocked up/knocking someone up and wake the next morning demanding, "WHERE ARE MY GRANDBABIES?!" with no transition phase or sense of disconnect apparent. (I wisely preempted this phenomenon myself by having Medium Fry when I was 22.)

I found myself executing a similarly abrupt about-face on a recent shopping expedition with Medium Fry: one moment I was wistfully eyeing the rainbow lacies section while Medium Fry was getting measured for the correct purse size, and the next moment I was trying to mask the clear signs of the heart attack I was experiencing whilst choking out, "Are you certain she didn't say 'B' as in 'Bravo'? Or maybe 'C' as in 'Charlie'?"

... I was, very clearly, in D-nial.

On the bright side, once I got over this massive cognitive road block that I wasn't even aware I had, I got to mine one of my many esoteric fields of expertise and we spent a very informative afternoon learning about things like "uniboob" and "rocket tits" and how they are to be avoided. And we found a companiable middle ground where comfort, lift and separation all lived in harmony together in a muted yet fashionable colour palette.

My day had finally come.

Pressure is off, Small Fry. Wear whatever you like.