Theresa Lewis

No one ever really knows what another person is going through on a daily basis. Life is everything, yes, everything. Sometimes, life is sad. Sometimes it is difficult, sometimes it is confusing, sometimes life can also be hilarious. Instead of wallowing in the tribulations of life, I say laugh whenever you get a chance. Laugh until your cheeks hurt and your ribs are aching. Well, that’s my motto anyway. I love to laugh.

I remember not feeling well at work one day, so I came home early. Normally, my mother left the front door unlocked so my younger siblings could let themselves into the house when they arrived home from school. That particular day, I was the first to arrive home. I called my mom, but didn’t receive a response. I searched everywhere for my mom. I was more than a little concerned that she would go out and leave the door unlocked with no one at home to greet the young ones when they would arrive home after school. The last room I checked was my parents’ bedroom. I found my mother stretched out across the bed. I thought she was dead.

“Oh, mom!”, I said sadly. I heard a feeble, barely audible voice. “Help me,” she practically whispered to me. She looked and sounded like she was strangling. I could see her right arm straight up above her head, pressed against her ear by some sort of fabric. The fabric was around her neck and across her throat. Her other arm was pinned by her side. I asked her what happened. Back in those days, mom always wore a corset. Recently however, the latest fashion in foundation undergarments was a two way stretch, one size fits all girdle. Mom bought herself one. The problem was that she had no idea how to put it on. I started to giggle. I explained that you had to step into it, then pull it up.

Now, mom was a bit of a hefty woman. She was five feet tall, no matter if she was standing up, or laying down. I worked for the longest time to extricate her from the strangle hold that girdle had on her. Once I freed her from that weapon of torture, I held it up in front of me. There was no way in this world that that garment that was a mere eight inches wide should be claimed to be ‘one size fits all.’ It just couldn’t happen. They say, no one ever sees themselves the way the rest of humanity sees them. This was a perfectly clear example of that. Still, I was trying to be sensitive to her situation, but alas, I lost it in a major way.

Once my hysteria kicked into overdrive, I simply couldn’t stop myself. At first, my mother scolded me for laughing at her, but she knew it was hopeless and soon she was laughing as hard as I was. It is my belief that she went back to wearing her corset and never again did she try a ‘one size fits all’ … of anything. If nothing else, I, who was feeling ill at the time, had the best darn laugh that I’d had in a heck of a long time.

THE END