Fantasy and Reality
Why can’t the reality of something, just once, measure up to my fantasy expectations of it? I am so tired of disappointments. I’m an old man with not many vital (makes it sound better doesn’t it?) years remaining to me. My fantasies are about all I’ve got left to live for and I’m tired of seeing them lying crushed and broken at my feet.
What happened you ask? Well . . .
Last week as my wife and I are lying in bed waiting for our great Select Comfort™* bed’s ‘soothing sleep’ to kick in she asks me, “Honey, I’ve got to get a new bra. Would you like to go shopping with me this weekend to pick one up? We could go out afterwards and have a nice dinner.”
Dear readers, words simply can not convey how quickly a thousand and one Arabian night’s fantasies flashed through my hot and feverish brain. The wheels started turning and pictures with many ideas going off like a slide show inside my head . . .
In my very best not wishing . . . to appear . . . too eager . . . voice I replied, “Uh, I guess that would be okay.” Now to be perfectly honest, I do not like to go shopping . . . even for myself so it is unusual for me to bow out of any shopping experience. I lived in
“Well, I’m glad you did not stay up too late playing video games so we can get an early start tomorrow.”
Sleep? How could I possibly get any sleep with the scantily clad visions now dancing in my head? Oh, the expectations I had. I have sat in the bathroom reading the Victoria Secrets catalog when I have finished the current ‘People’ magazine to find out what is happening “Outside” our great state. I’ve seen the television specials. I know what goes on in these lacey establishments.
Would Sting be performing live? Would I wind up in the lounge with other husbands or boyfriends anxiously awaiting a look at what was picked out? Is there a ‘Runway’ like on the Bravo TV show filled with gossamer covered angels of heavenly beauty showing us the newest fashions in lingerie? Would it be just like the pajama party frolics I’d imagined in my youth? Would it be okay to take a digital camera for this joyous occasion?
Oh, be still my trembling heart . . . to sleep now I say . . .
How quickly hope dies in the heart of the male member of the human species. I knew the moment we pulled into the parking lot that my fantasies were in serious trouble. There were no spotlights sweeping back and forth across the heavens. There were no limousines dropping off beautiful people at red-carpeted-photographer-lined entrances.
There was a girl with a shopping cart over by the trash dumpsters that could have been Britney Spears. She was wearing a really bad looking hooded sweatshirt and was acting kind of funny like she was on something. It may have been she was just trying to find out the location of the next rehab center to check into and see its accommodations.
Dear friends, this was not the glass and chrome palace of my fantasies. This was not even the castle of pretty panties and eye candy come true for good little grown up boys. No, this was an industrial factory where the welders of steel combine with the makers of fabric to produce brassieres capable of supporting Mother Earth.
This is where they measure a woman’s bra size by first assembling a scaffold around her belly and then sending a trained team of Alpine climbers to the summit armed with batteries of heavy duty tape measures. It is dangerous work.
I’ve never seen so many pregnant women together in one place . . .
I may be scarred for life.
I was the only man there . . .
Why am I always the last one to learn?
There are feminine secrets a man should never know and this is one of them; Fredrick’s of
No, they are sent to darker places.
And it is an injustice to these women who are beautiful because of the hearts they possess and the love they pour into our homes on a daily bases. These are the women who deserve the lingerie palaces, not the skinny ones and their friends.
If you are a real man, like me, do yourself a favor and stay home when your wife goes shopping for under garments. It’s not pretty and what you have imagined in that male mind of ours.
Stay home and play that computer game or watch the television specials as you thumb through the pages of that sports magazine. Keep your candy coated dreams alive. Keep that boyish mentality alive . . . Trust me; it’s better for everyone that way.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going up to my room to cry over the loss of another adolescent fantasy.
Reality . . . who knew it was going to be that hard on us old farts.
Ice
* My Sleep Comfort number is 55. Great nights sleep on a cushion of air.
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