Some of my all time favorite "Did This Really Just Happen?" moments have been while working as a customer service representative. I have been the recipient of countless veiled insults (though to be fair, a good amount of them were never meant to be). Over that time, I have been informed that my head was too large for my neck, (honestly), my feet- most specifically my toes- were too large for my body, and that I had, and I quote, "... a beautiful smile. Are they all yours?" It took me a minute to realize he was talking about my teeth. No joke.
One of my favorites was a repeat customer, who spent fifteen to twenty minutes explaining to me that my body structure was all wrong. My arms, she said, were much too large for my torso. She went on to explain, "You're so thin, but you have the arms of a much bigger girl. Really, if someone just looked at your arms, they would think you were fat."
Really?? REALLY??
She continued on in this vein, explaining her theory in frank and complete thoroughness. I guess she thought I really cared. At one point, she actually encircled her thumb and middle finger (or attempted to anyway) around my bicep while pointing at my waist with her other hand, in order to drive her point home. And the whole time I just stood there thinking, Is this really happening??? I didn't know what to say. My brain was going about a mile a minute. Sentences like, "I'm so sorry I offend you with my Frankensteinian proportions. The old doc was a having a bad day I guess," and "I'll try to keep my gargantuan arms in mind when I dress myself in the future," kept forming and re-forming themselves inside my brain. I was desperately attempting to find just the right scathing retort to shock her into silence. But, then I realized that, being the repeat customer that she was, she had chatted with me on several occasions, (always tackling such deep topics as the weather and sports, but sometimes even bravely delving into the unknown jungles of, gasp, television shows or books). She thought she was my friend. And as such, she had a right to dissect me. Really??
She babbled on long enough that I was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to stop. I was thinking, "Yep, I got it. Arms too big, body too small. No need to go on. Speaka de English here and we are all picking up what you are putting down. Walking freak-show right here folks. Come and take a gander while the show's still free."
For weeks, I wandered around feeling a bit self-conscious. Uncomfortable. Embarrassed. Awkward. Here I was, some kind of mish-mashed freak. My head, arms, and toes were all much too big for the rest of my body! What about my hands? My legs? How did they rate in comparison? And, oh my God! What about my butt? Was I sporting some colossal shelf butt without even realizing it? I had to keep checking the mirror. Was I completely blind to what everyone else was so obviously noticing? I mean, all my life I had taken for granted that my body was just all one size. One package. Large or small, everything sort of went together. Now, it had been (abruptly) brought to my attention that this was simply not the case. I was some kind of walking mix and match. Kind of like that game you find in coloring books, where you have five or six creatures that you color then cut into strips and then add the head of one creature, to the body of another, to the legs of yet another. Yep, that's me. One Great Big Mix And Match! Whoopee!!
So how to go about fixing this funhouse mirror of a body? At first I thought, a hat for my giant head. Then I realized, that would just make it proportionally larger. No go. A scarf! That was the answer. It would make the tottering precipice of my neck look like a much stronger foothold for my massive head. How I was gonna pull this off in the summer was another question, but I wasn't worrying about that right then. The only problem was, with my newly over-sized neck, my shoulders looked too narrow. I was just going to have to wait for the huge shoulder pads so trendy in the eighties to come back in style. Until then, a couple of throw pillows would have to do.
On to the arms. That was a little tougher. They make girdles and Spanx for tummies and thighs, but not so much for the arms. But quickly, I learned that these items are even sold to the tiny people. (Seriously, if you are already a size two, exactly what do you need a girdle for?) However, the extra small just suited my purpose. I cut off the legs, attaching the thigh end to my bra straps. I was in business. At least until it started rolling up my wrists. Once again I turned to my scissors. I snipped a hole in each knee end and anchored it over my thumbs. Voila!
Now my feet. Out go the flip flops. Out go the open-toed sandals. Can't be unleashing these bad boys on the unsuspecting public, no sirree bob. Combat boots. That should hide any errant over-sized toe and/or foot flab.
I whirled around and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like a mixture of Madonna meets Cyndi Lauper in the Thunderdome. Way less cool though.
Tearing off all the bad style choices not to be repeated since the eighties, I glared at myself in the mirror, gritting my teeth.
Then I smile. Widely. They're all mine. Thank God, I still have all my own teeth.
I gotta go floss....
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