Life has a lot of tiny problems that cause irritations in our daily life.

Apples knock around in the car’s back seat because your groceries fell over when you turned the corner too sharp. You forgot your phone and the restaurant’s hostess asks your number so she can call you when a table is ready. On your birthday, someone remarks you look good for your age.

Annoyances plague our lives. Even on our birthday.
However, a too-tight bra is not one of them.
It robs us of joy. If I say I feel like killing you because my bra is too tight, some of you understand and back up slowly. Others think I’m joking.

I’m not.

I bought a beautiful Maidenform bra. The kind with lace and ribbon and pale, pink silky fabric. I tried it on at the store and it felt a little snug, but in the dressing room I thought snug felt good.

At home I tried on my new bra again, and this time it felt more like a 600-pound gorilla performing the Heimlich maneuver. I could hardly breathe.

I really didn’t want to drive thirty-five miles back to the store to make an exchange.

Not to worry, I thought. I’ll throw it in the washing machine. This process never failed to stretch out bras in the past. After washing two times, the bra continued to put me in a stranglehold. I tried hand-stretching, yanking both ends of the bra back and forth like you do with rubber strips for resistance exercise. I did this for several days. I yanked and pulled. This method proved a failure, but my arms developed some nice muscles.

I decided the bra needed to stretch out overnight. I threw it back in the washing machine and when the machine finished the job, I stretched the wet bra around one of my gigantic throw pillows. I let it dry in the attached position. I knew this had to be the answer.

Apparently, not. Bra-strangulation persisted.

I searched Google. Someone must have had this same problem. I found a post that suggested attaching weights to both ends of the bra and let it dangle for days. I couldn’t figure out how to attach my five-pound dumbbells to the bra or where to hang it from. I considered hanging it from the ceiling fan and swinging from it like Tarzan. As I thought this over, I discovered several posts suggesting a bra extender. I had never heard of such an item, but I was desperate. Some ingenious person somewhere thought to invent a fabric strip that hooks on to your bra to lengthen the band.

I ordered a set of three bra extenders from Amazon for only four bucks. Amazon stated the item would be delivered the next day, a Sunday nonetheless. Imagine, two-inch pieces of cloth delivered by truck to my house within 24 hours. Amazon really knows how to come through when there’s an emergency.

The set of bra extenders arrived but did not fit the bra. Who knew you had to order a size with the correct dimension between the hooks? I asked Jerry to measure to make sure I had the correct dimensions. It turns out I needed 3/8 inch between hooks. I ordered again and this time I had the right size. I had to use two extenders to make it finally fit.

That said, I have this sudden urge to apply blue face paint, fire up Jerry’s blow torch, and blast my bra to cinders while yelling, Mel Gibson-like, “Freeee-dom!”

Except I won’t. That bra was too expensive.

βω

Note from Bronwyn—After a two-year hiatus, a pandemic, and a new appreciation for toilet paper, my blog returns. The blog’s former name “Bronwyn’s Writing Room” gave the impression I wrote about the craft of writing. The new name describes what this blog is really about. “Almost nothing.” The ups and downs of life are important parts of living and that’s what I will write about. For many of us that isn’t “nothing”—that’s why I included the important additional word: “Almost.” read more