Small Clothes, Big Fat

My wardrobe deficiency and clothing in general have been on my mind lately for a few reasons. First of all, I am going on a cruise (I'll tell you much more about that in a later post). And second of all, I have had a few too many close encounters with tiny clothing in the past few weeks:

Laura came over last week after going to the gym, she does this on occasion. She goes to the gym after work; I stop by Jim’s BBQ to get a sandwich for dinner (they have excellent sauce). Laura changed, used my shower, and showed me how many times my towel wraps around her tiny waist (while I can barely cover myself in it). Then, she made the mistake of leaving her work out T-shirt at my house. I’m (generally) a nice girl, so I put her dirty tiny shirt in the washer so when I gave it back to her, like I had planned to, it would be clean. I threw her shirt in the washer and didn't think about it again. On Friday I looked in the dryer and found a load of the rags our housekeeper uses to clean the toilets, floors and whatnot. And in the pile of rags was Laura’s shirt.

I understand why my housekeeper though that Laura's tiny shirt was a rag. After all, it’s about the size of a hanker chief. No way could anyone in my household fit into it. I know I'm a spiteful friend, but instead of telling Laura what happened, I might just give it back to her and say nothing ... just reaping the pleasure of seeing her in that shirt again, knowing that it cleaned my toilet. Fat girl revenge can be an ugly thing, but she gets to be skinny, so I take my pleasure where I can get it.

I mean Laura just doesn't get it. Take my latest trip to Old Navy. I recently ordered a lot of clothes online and in various sizes so I could try different things on. Old Navy has a plus size dept and it’s either hit or miss with them (refer to my letter to Lane Bryant who I still have not heard back from). I bought about $400 worth of clothing and was returning about $300. So, I went up to the cashier, handed him my 3X and 2X returns and he rang it all up.

I was wondering around the store looking for more clothes I could buy and return later when Laura called me. She had recently seen a pair of pants she wanted, and asked if I could buy them for her. At this point in our friendship, Laura should know that I HATE wandering into the "normal" size section of clothing stores ... especially when I am by myself because I look literally crazy. I feel like I am there just to make the women who are only 10 or 15 lbs bigger than the ideal body weight feel better about themselves. After all, it's a lot easier to be happy about being a size 14 when there is a size 24 girl wandering down the same isle. Perhaps because I felt bad about the toilet shirt I was going to give back to her, I decided to get her the pants she wanted.

I ended up in front of the same cashier who had just accepted my $300 worth of size 22 and XXXL fat girl's clothing returns. Dumbfounded is the only word to describe his face. Yes, I had just returned a large load (pun intended), of fat girl clothes and was now purchasing a size EXTRA SMALL pants.

He stared at me for a good 10 seconds. He had every reason to.

I stared right back at him, smiled, and said: “I’ve got high hopes.”