Cheers for great rears!

Sometimes writer’s block is an unexpected and unsavory visitor in my neck of the woods and, yet, when it arrives I am compelled to welcome that dried-up guest honorably. It is usually clearing me out for some new delight. Last week it happened to be cookies.

Of course I ate too many of the little devils and gained five pounds overnight. A diet of lettuce and water then ensued because of a looming date with a swanky little Christmas party dress.

Where did the time go? The last time I looked it was September and I had three months to lose enough weight to be able to fit the dress that I bought one size too small on purpose. How stupid was that?

Suddenly the clock is ticking and if I don’t get my rear in gear that swanky little party dress is going to explode before I get the thing pulled down over my thighs. 

This is where Sara Blakely stepped in and mailed me a lovely little goodie box from southern Ontario and, no, it was not a box of chocolates.

I got the delivery notice in the mail and had to wait until the next day to pick up the package at the post office. It was all I could not to be standing outside the door at sunrise doing the happy dance and waving my little delivery notice in the morning breeze while eating my second cinnamon bun with icing.

What was in the box would fix everything. Ms. Blakely was the seamstress magician, the dream team coordinator of fat molecules, the queen of the undergarment policing committee.

Sara Blakely was going to save my keister with “Spanx.”

Each summer when I was growing up my mom would buy me a new pair of shoes for the start of the school year. I kept the shoe box under my bed and every once in a while I would open it up with such anticipation of the contents.

I freely admit that the thrill of opening my lovely little goodie box from Spanx rated right up there with that childhood excitement.

When I lifted the lid, there it was  . . . wrapped most perfectly in red tissue paper . . .  the miracle worker of this woman’s world.

“Don’t worry, we’ve got your butt covered! Cheers to great rears!” was written inside the box cover, along with translations in eight other languages. How cool was that?! I had something in common with big bums all over the world.

I carefully unfolded the wrapping and slipped my hand inside the garment bag and pulled out a pint-sized slip of spandex hardware.

Suddenly I was stock-still like the 100-year old frozen man in the James Taylor song of the same name and I was sure I was off my rocker. 

I had a déjà vu flashback to a column I wrote in December 2004 after I’d wedged myself into a similar contraption, when “all my softwear was packed into the hardware like an hourglass. So what if it took a chisel and vice to put it on.”

And then I remembered what it was like to have to get out of the thing at the end of the night.

From what I can recall anyone standing within 20 feet of me would have suffered a black eye when off came the body-shaper in one big bang and flew like a slingshot as my womanhood decompressed. 

Shake my head. Here I go again, and girls, make sure your captain isn't watching and then for go it! Cheers to great rears!