Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog (44 page)

It’s a Miracle, right?

The story got me thinking that my underwire isn’t working hard enough. It would never save my life. It won’t even stay in place. All it does is ride up, making a red line across my breasts, as if it’s playing Connect the Nips.

For this I paid $35.

I’ve come to the conclusion that underwear is not worth paying a lot of money for. Ladies, if you want to economize, your undies are the place to do it. Sorry, undies manufacturers. And especially Spanx makers. You know how I feel about you.

You’ll get yours.

Anyway, why spend on undies? First off, nobody sees it. And if you’re lucky enough for somebody to see it, chances are they’ve seen it before. In fact, if you’re married, they’ve seen it 3,437,464 times before. By now they’ve memorized your bra rotation, including the one special bra that’s your trump card.

Oh, admit it, girls. You have one. We all do.

You don’t have to be a fembot to have a sure-fire underwire.

Even nuns like me have a Good Bra. For church.

But the truth is, the trump card loses its effect over time. Men develop an immunity, especially if the ball game is on. I’ve never met the push-up that can face down a World Series.

Let’s get real.

I never knew a lot about men to begin with, and I remember even less, but as I recall, they don’t really care about bras. It’s skin they’re after. If you really want to please a man, I’d save on underwear and put the money into NFL Season Ticket on cable.

In fact, it makes me wonder whether men would spend what we do on undies. Take thongs, for example. I doubt you could talk a man into a thong, at any price. Men want cotton and comfort. They know their trump card is a steady job.

I went through that phase where people told me that thongs were “so comfortable.” Liars, every last one of them. Thongs are comfortable only if you’re a fan of shoelaces. I saw that movie
Man on Wire,
about a Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center. At one point, he sat on the tightrope and winced.

That’s as close as a man will get to a thong.

Plus, the less comfortable the thong, the more it costs. I saw thong prices go from twenty bucks to thirty, and I went back to my Hanes three-pack of cotton bikinis. Why pay more, for panties? In the end, I know they’re just going to end up as chew toys for the dog. My goldens stroll downstairs with them hanging between their teeth, usually when the UPS man is here.

Hi!

Plus cotton undies take no care at all. Throw them in the washer with your sweat socks and go. Even the Sturdy cycle, they can handle it. They’re Sturdy, by God!

Contrast that with the care and feeding of your thongs. Children need less attention. The woman at the store told me I had to wash my thongs by hand, in warm water and Woolite, then lay them flat to dry. I did that approximately one time. I washed my thongs and set them drying on towels arrayed on the kitchen table. Which was when the UPS man came in.

The curse of working at home is that the UPS man knows way too much about you. The upside is, you don’t care.

So I went back to the store and they told me I could put the thongs in the washing machine, but I would need a special mesh laundry bag to protect them from the mean old hot water. And thongs have to be washed on the Delicate cycle, which I always forgot to put on. In time, they turned into expensive slingshots, and I gave up.

I’m Sturdy, not Delicate.

And I expect as much from my undies, even if they don’t save my life.

Before I left for book tour, I had to get my roots done and buy new jeans.

This would be the proverbial good news and bad news.

I love getting my roots done, because it makes me feel like a natural blonde for one whole day. I try to schedule as many things as I can that day, just so I can stay out and march around, tossing my head like a shampoo commercial. Later I drive home fast, with the sunroof open.

Wheee!

Blondes do have more fun.

But my blondeness evaporates by the next day, when I start to see a line of darkness advancing from my hairline like a storm cloud. In more recent years, I’ve begun to notice a few strands of gray—okay, maybe more than a few, like maybe Elsa Lanchester in
The Bride of Frankenstein.

Not a good look for me.

To tell the truth, lately I’m longing for my black roots. In fact, I might even start dyeing my roots black.

Or I could just save the money and buy a Sharpie.

Either way, getting my roots done is fun, but shopping for jeans is my least favorite thing ever.

Please tell me I’m not alone.

Shopping for bathing suits gets all the bad press, but to me, shopping for jeans is much worse. If you’re shopping for a bathing suit, you’re steeled for bad news. Shopping for bathing suits is like the mammogram of clothes.

Plus, most people don’t go bathing-suit shopping very often. I myself have been divorced as many times as I’ve gone bathing-suit shopping, not that there’s any connection. My goal in life would be to get divorced more times than I’ve been bathing-suit shopping.

Then I could die happy.

But shopping for jeans can blindside you, and catch you unawares. It should be easy, but it’s not. You might give yourself a day to find a pair of jeans, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough. You have to factor in your shopping time, plus the times you give up and go home in disgust.

That’s like twelve days, right there.

Buying jeans is much worse than buying swimsuits, mainly because there are five billion jeans companies and none of the sizes fit the same from one company to the next, except for one thing—the jeans are always too small.

Hmmm.

My favorite jeans used to be a super-comfy pair, but then people started telling me they were Mom Jeans. Evidently, I wasn’t allowed to look like a Mom, though I was one, and everybody said that if I kept wearing the Mom Jeans, I’d live a Lifetime of Celibacy.

I’m halfway there.

So I went shopping for jeans, grabbed a bunch of pairs off the shelf, then went into the dressing room, trying on one after the other. Nothing fit right. I could barely get them closed in my alleged size, and if I went up in size, they gapped in the back. All
of them were too long, like by a foot. Except for one magical pair. Amazingly, I slid into them and they fit perfectly, but they had a button fly.

Please.

The salesgirl came in, parted the curtain, and said, “Lots of women like button flies.”

“They would be in AP Bio, right?”

She didn’t reply and went away, so I tried on two more pairs with no luck, then slid into the third pair and struck gold. They fit great, closed easily, didn’t gap at the back, and felt as good as my beloved Mom Jeans. The salesgirl came back, and I told her, “I love this pair!”

“Cool. They’re so hot now. They’re Boyfriend Jeans.”

“What?”

“Boyfriend Jeans. You know, like if you stayed overnight at your boyfriend’s and the next morning you put on his jeans?”

There were so many things wrong with what she was saying, I didn’t know where to start. I reached out and closed the curtain in her face, then took off the jeans and left the mall, reeling.

So the only pants that fit me were men’s.

And I didn’t have a boyfriend.

And if I did, after I’d spent the night at his place, I would never dream of putting on his pants the next morning. That’s why they call it cross-dressing.

Bottom line, I’m caught between Boyfriend Jeans and Mom Jeans.

I bet Hemingway didn’t have this problem.

I’m not sure when my car became my house, but I think it happened somewhere near Pittsburgh. And I bet I’m not the only woman who has a car house.