As you have probably noticed but were too polite to mention, I write with limp. It’s a short, sad story that you can read about here. But I hold no grudges, so in act of magnanimity (5-syllable word!), I have asked my sister, she of great tallness and photogenicality (7-syllable non-word!) to write a guest post.
For your enjoyment….
Little sis wrote a blog a while back about roaches, and I can certify her terror of bugs – especially the flying variety. Back in the dark ages when they were building the interstate highway through Idaho (I know it is a stretch to believe there was a need for a four-lane, divided highway for the 75 people who lived in Idaho at the time, but our ever clever government was planning ahead for the 750 people who live there now), little sis and I were driving a VW bug (she was never comfortable with that car) from Alaska to Texas. It was late summer, and we had no air conditioning, so despite the thick construction dust, our windows were down.
Courtesy of http://pix.epodunk.com/
On a particularly narrow, winding stretch of road in the mountains near Coeur d’Alene, a buzzing critter winged its way through the passenger window past little sis’ nose, at which point she flung herself at me, wrapping one arm around my neck in a death-grip and the other around my head, completely blocking my vision of the road ahead, and the 2,000 foot drop-off to our right, all the while screaming at the top of her lungs, “Get it out!! GET IT OUT!!!”
I tell you this story just so you know she was not the only sister to suffer in the years we spent together. Those of you who follow her blog know whereof I speak.
But I digress. Little Sis has asked me to tell you a story.
♕ ♕ ♕ ♕ ♕
It was my daughter who introduced us. Had I known what lay ahead, I’d have walked away without a backward glance. But isn’t that the way of so many pivotal moments in life, seemingly innocent yet pregnant with the inevitable calamity to follow?
It began when the bride, my daughter’s friend, asked my granddaughter to be her flower girl. It was to be quite the grand wedding, with a reception at one of Houston’s finest hotels and a sit-down dinner, no less. My daughter, a fashion-design graduate, graciously offered to help me shop for something suitable to wear.
Shopping for clothes is never a happy event for me. While the lower half of my body might charitably be described as Reuben-esque, the upper half is decidedly Picasso-esque. As my daughter had decided that the something suitable should be an evening suit, we left behind us a multitude of ravaged dressing rooms in our pursuit of a suit that would fit my mismatched body parts.
At long last we found something…almost. It was classy and understated, and a tad snugger across the posterior than I was comfortable with, but daughter assured me this was not a problem. She had the perfect solution: a hip slip.
For those of you who have not yet been introduced, a hip slip is similar to a garment known to generations of women as a girdle, but without the crotch. It is an elastic tube made of a demon-fiber, designed to push everything from waist to mid-thigh into a compact package: no jiggles, no wiggles, no rolls, no lines. And it works. The fact that my breathing was labored and my walk was strikingly geisha-ish mattered little, for when I tried the skirt on over the hip slip, voila, no more unsightly bulge behind me!
Are your hips jiggle-ohs? Put them in their place with The Hip Guardian. (Sandpaper not included.) Available on Wikipedia.
It wasn’t until the night of the wedding that I discovered the rub (I usually leave the punning to Little Sis, but this was irresistible). Dressing for the evening required pantyhose under the hip slip that stretched over my ample thighs; these were then clamped tightly together by the aforementioned demon-fiber. The effect is not unlike walking around with sandpaper taped to your upper thighs.
I managed to get through the ceremony and dinner, but when the dancing began, I knew I had to do something. Close to tears, I made my way to the ladies’ room. Inside the stall, I raised the skirt and began the wrestling match of my life in an effort to get the hip slip up around my waist…no easy task with the unyielding boning digging into my flesh and elbows banging the side panels and the woman next door asking if everything was all right. I assured her things were peachy as I carefully folded two long strips of toilet paper into square pads. The top of the pantyhose was now strangled under the wadded up hip slip but I managed to stretch the thing out far enough to wriggle my hand down inside the hose to place a toilet paper pad on my raw thighs…twice.
The relief was heavenly. Of course, then I had to reassemble my ensemble. One thing my daughter had failed to warn me about was how much more difficult it is to pull a hip slip down over the hips from a wadded position at the waist than up over them (this could be because it was never meant to be there in the first place, but what are you to do with the thing when nature calls?!). Remember all those jeans you’ve tried to wiggle and jiggle and bounce your way into, only to finally lay on a bed so you could get them zipped? Try doing that in a 2’x 3’ metal stall in heels.
Once everything was back in place, I took a few minutes to mop the sweat off my face, splash cool water on my flaming red cheeks, and fix my disheveled hair before returning to the ballroom.
I was delighted to join in the dancing for the next half hour or so. Swinging my darling granddaughter up in my arms for a waltz and loving every moment of her breathless giggles as I twirled her on the dance floor, I was surprised when my daughter walked up behind me and whispered urgently in my ear, “Mother, you need to go to the ladies’ room.”
“I’ve already been to the ladies’ room, darling.”
“Yes, Mother, I know you have, but you need to go again.”
She then put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me out of the ballroom, walking lockstep directly behind me. I wondered what in the world had gotten into her but didn’t want to make a scene, so I let her push me all the way to the ladies’ room. Inside, she took granddaughter from my arms and suggested I look at my left calf.
You will probably not be surprised when I tell you that one of the 3” squares of toilet paper had shimmied its way from my thigh to my calf, inside my pantyhose. Not exactly the elegant look I was going for.
I once again found myself in a 2’x 3’ metal stall with skirt and hip slip scrunched around my waist while I struggled to get my arm inside my pantyhose, and this time I had to get, not to the top of my thigh, but to my lower calf. A more sane, less vain woman would have stripped off the pantyhose or the hip slip, or better yet, both, but, alas, I refused to be bested by an expensive piece of elastic, so I did my crazy dance, part twist and part watusi, part jumping jack one more time.
Thankfully the remainder of the evening passed undergarment uneventfully. I did learn some things from the experience, though, which I’ll share with you because I believe suffering should never be wasted.
Never allow someone younger than you to introduce you to a new undergarment. Each generation contrives its own version of torture for the feminine form, and it is wise to stick with your own…better the devil you know. I’m grateful to have learned this lesson before several younger friends tried to convince me how wonderful thong undies are. Thongs are for your feet…those things are posterior floss.
Any garment composed primarily of elastic/lycra/spandex or any other demon-fiber, particularly when it includes boning/shaping, is not your friend and will eventually cause you pain or embarrassment, or both. Avoid them at all costs.
Most important, look the woman in your mirror in the eye and remind her that her darling granddaughter will not remember if the skirt she wore was a tad snug or if it was tres chic or a bit dated…what she will remember is that her grandmother danced with her and laughed with her and found delight in her company, even in the midst of an adult party, even with egg on her face (or the back of her leg).
year-struck 
Great post! I think just about any woman who’s ever tried to use undergarments to facilitate cramming a little more into a little less can identify!
What I want to know is why they’ve never come up with an undergarment that takes my little more and puts it where I’m a little less…that one I would buy.
I remember that Diabolical Device, that you Speak of…That my First Wife wore,
Diabolical, indeed, as it continually re-invents and renames itself…corset, girdle, hip slip, body shaper.
My mother’s girdle was crotch-less and did its work by way of corset laces that criss-crossed all the way up the front. Lucky for her, pantyhose had not yet been invented; garters dangled invitingly from four points on the lower edge of the girdle. Nice big silk (and then nylon) panties went over everything. My bedroom was next to my parents’: I can still hear her sigh every night when the thing came off.
My panty-girdle, equipped with detachable garters (just in case you fancied knee socks, I guess), pulled on with great effort. The legs extended to mid-thigh, causing a flesh-swell in a most unexpected point on the leg; for those endowed with curvaceous thighs (well, I’ll call them that), the bonus was the come-along orchestra, the shwhoo-shwhoop-shwhoop as thigh brushed thigh. From that garment stems my reluctance to spend time in libraries and churches—even though the thing itself is long gone.
I remember those dangling garters, deadly weapons when detached, stretched out and let fly
I see that talent and humor run in the family. Great story.
So glad you enjoyed it. As Little Sis said in an earlier comment, we got the humor from our mother. The love of words and learning came from our daddy…his idea of bed-time reading was Greek mythology and the encyclopedia, with a generous helping of poetry thrown in.
This is why they invented girdles with crotches. Unfortunately, I have felt every bit of your pain. Great story.
On a different note: YS I thought you would get a kick out of what I initially thought this post was called when it appeared in my email: Her lips find themselves in a tight spot.
Oh, that happens quite often as well, usually when they find themselves wrapped around my foot again.
It is good to learn that the suffering of the sisters crossed both sides of the road, although I think writing with a limp for all eternity may trump being blinded while traversing a potentially life ending stretch of road. I mean, seriously, we’re talking about all of eternity here. Your example illustrated a mere momentary inconvenience, of which you obviously survived. Sisters tend to have such a limited perspective when it comes to such comparisons.
However, I am pleased to opine that your writing ability is certainly quite entertaining and of the highest quality, at least from where I sit. I could practically feel the squeeze of that latex and demon-fiber garment crushing the air right out of my lungs as you wrestled it into submission in the bathroom stall. That errant swatch of toilet paper surrepticiously wiggling its way down your thigh and onto your calf provided a welcome spot of laughter, and the heart-warming and ever so true sentiment shared at the end of the story is a good reminder to every one of us to focus on what we can celebrate in every situation, even when we are squeezed and squooshed beyond recognition.
Thanks for sharing this lovely rendition of hips as a lethal weapon, and how you chose to survive a disastrous situation by focusing on the joy experienced therein. Clever girl.
Thanks for your encouraging words. I tend to be a bit of a pessimist, but find laughter often changes my perspective…this is one of my favorite mother-daughter-granddaughter memories.
The writing gene is in the jeans. Or should that be hip slip. Your story was an entertaining read.
Delighted you liked it…and let’s hope it’s in the jeans since I never intend to wear the demon-garment again!
I think I may be familiar with that unnecessary, tiny stretch of road in Idaho – I drove through a one-horse town there in about 1986. An entire 4 lane highway was condensed to a capillary flow between two wooden saloons, where they still maintained hitching posts for horses. We got out of my boyfriends Buick and hitched the car up to a post, strolled in for a beer – and all I remember is some bartender carding me. And how angry I was. Back then.
If that same bartender were to card me today, he would get a $20 tip even before the frothy beers met the surface of the bar 😀
We were 20 years ahead of you and our mother and her husband were in the car in front of us, so no frothy, refreshing beers for us. The only card people ask me for now is AARP.
One of the very best things about sliding along toward old age is how each successive year makes me shed yet one more kilo of vanity, even if it’s replaced with a kilo something much jigglier!
love the “one kilo of vanity” reference … it is true, isn’t it, how our vanity evaporates as we get older … who has time for vanity when we’re busy doing other things?
Indeed, it is a form of emancipation that brings all kinds of unexpected riches…more time, more energy, even more money to spend on things which enrich the heart and expand one’s vision. Like 99, love your phrase “one kilo of vanity”!
Thank you for the fun read, and the warning to stay away from demon fiber. I used to be a waif, always ten pounds underweight, naturally so (might have had something to do with the fact that no matter how long they made me sit there, I wouldn’t eat things I didn’t like); now however, I am much more like that description you gave. Reuben-esque on the bottom and did you say Picassoish on top? Yes.Or maybe Van Goeghish…. I suppose that describes me rather well now.
You’ve obviously been having way too much fun up there next to the border. You came out of that situation with nary a scratch on your ego. Just goes to prove what strong character is often fostered in the small towns of America.
You are most welcome. Having never been a waif (10 lbs 15 oz at birth!), nor petite (5′ 8″ by age 12), I had plenty of scratches on the ego before I learned to accept and appreciate my physical self and simply enjoy all the wonders it brings to my inner self. As kathryn pointed out, it is a part of growing not just older but wiser. Thanks for your kind words.
reminds me of the line I heard once…don’t remember who it was from, but this post brought it to mind:
“I used to jog, but I had to give it up because it was endangering my health…..my thighs rubbed together and kept catching my panties on fire…”
The very reason I NEVER wear corduroy pants.
I laughed all the way through this. Thanks, I needed that.
So glad you enjoyed it. I smile every time I remember that night.
hello, yearstricken,
your sister’s narrative’s short and sweet, haha. ^^ regards! 🙂
Yes, she’s quite funny. Glad you liked it.
🙂 🙂