So here's a story.
I like Tuesdays, because on Tuesday mornings I meet my friends Karen and her hubba-hubba husky Sakari for a brisk walk down at the Rose Bowl, a place, it seems, to which I am tethered at all hours of daylight and sometimes beyond, but that's not the point of this story.
Karen and I talk and talk and talk and talk and walk and grouse and tell each other things we wouldn't tell anyone else, hardly, and it gets engrossing and so sometimes, in and among all those compelling moments, we make decisions that might otherwise, on a day when we are not totally involved in hearing aloud the woes of ourselves and each other, have been more carefully baked. This is why I put my fob key in my bra.
An aside: even though I treated myself to a few new bras somewhat recently, they are not quite as snug as they used to be.
I put my fob in my bra because when I walk with Karen I like to tote along as little as possible. I can't stand having my pockets loaded, if I even have a pocket; stuff like cell phone, water, keys, and the like drag me down and make me bulky, so I lock it all up in my car and just take my little fob, which is quite manageable cupped in the palm of my hand. Until I have to go pee, in which case the fob goes in my bra, for but a minute or two.
I put the fob in my bra when I go pee because it's a park bathroom and, you know. You all know park bathrooms. They're not latrines, per se, but they might as well be. I didn't want to have to put my key down on the park bathroom stall floor. Ew. So I did pee and during the contortions I find necessary in order to flush the latrine-like toilet in the park bathroom without actually touching the flusher with my hand, I heard a splish!plink!sliiiide just like that. I looked at the latrine-like toilet bowl. Nothing. I felt my bra. Nothing.
I am in the latrine-like park bathroom stall looking down the tiny hole of a public toilet for my car key. I shout to Karen to please come in and lend me moral support. She obliged me, and with her presence as a source of strength and comfort, I stuck my hand down the hole of a public park bathroom toilet.
"Aw, lookit the dookie coming up!" shouted Karen. "Man!"
I am not entirely sure what happened after that, because I had to transport my mind to somewhere else, a place where my hand was not crammed down a dark toilet hole that was as slimy and textural as algae covered rocks in a stagnant creek on a hot day. Fifteen minutes later, I emerge triumphant, my dripping fob intact, my hands drenched to the forearm, my ego and dignity pretty much shot to shit for the next, say, twenty five years. Karen wisely ducked out of hugging me goodbye.
I ran to the locker room in the aquatic center and spent the next ten minutes trying to scald my hands and arms off my body. After the scalding I soaped up to the elbows and scrubbed like a surgeon for another ten minutes. Then I scrubbed my fob with soap and it occurred to me that after all this, I was probably ruining my key in all that water anyway, but that was too depressing a thought so I went back to imagining myself a surgeon. There was a big lady swim club getting showered and dressed in the locker room while I was doing all this and after awhile I noticed them all sort of staring. That's when I left.
My key thankfully worked enough to open my trunk, where I threw it behind my first aid kit. I had a spare fob in my purse (another long story) so I used that to get my car going, fast, up the hill and home. Once I got there I took off my shoes and socks and threw them in the trash. I know, but before you say anything, these were my really old trainers with a whole plethora of holes, so. After that I took off all my clothes on the porch. I was planning to throw those away, too, but Jaime reminded me, as I stood naked in the doorway, that this is my favorite over-shirt
and the pants are brand new and the tee shirt is Carson's.
So they're now balled up and on the back deck.
My advice to you is, if you lose weight, buy new bras. Also, if you need to do something disgusting and fetid, bring a friend like Karen, whose shouting about dookie was completely unhelpful, but whose subsequent email, later that day, referring to me as a poop-covered inspiration, made me feel kind of heroic, if a little malodorous.