the girls

on the night of the symphony laura was having problems in the area of 'support'. in fact it was actually an ongoing problem. it was just that earlier that day she had looked at her current bra in disgust. it was old, broken and ineffective. "i don't think that i can go another day wearing that thing." she said to herself. she decided to dig through her drawer for other alternatives. in her search she came upon the pink lacy bra. "what's wrong with this one?" she wondered as she looked it over, examining it for the flaws that would have been the cause for it's abandonment to the depths of the drawer. it seemed fine. there were two intact underwires (a broken and protruding underwire was often the case with laura's support garments), and nothing else seemed amiss. she put it on. it felt pretty good to have some semi-quality support for once. "huh." she mused. "i wonder why i didn't like this one.." she gave it a once over in the oval mirror and as she turned she noticed the safety pin which secured one strap to the body of the garment. the safety pin prompted a memory of her at work, in the midst of the lunch craziness and feeling that something wasn't quite right. she had put her hand in the collar of her shirt, reached over her shoulder and pulled out the loose strap. she had gone in search of a safety pin and had handily patched everything up. "hmmm... maybe that's why i went on to other bras. oh well, it seems to work fine." and with that she continued dressing and went on with her day. it wasn't until she had a moment to sit down after lunch and do some computer work that the feeling of pain slowly dawned on her. and with the revelation of pain came the real reason why the pink lacy bra had been retired. the under wires had this evil bend at the top that pressed them unrelentingly into laura's tender flesh. she checked it out in the bathroom. yes she remembered the two angry red marks alright. how had she ever forgotten? it had taken weeks to get rid of the perma-bruise that she endured from that particular support system. the rest of the work day went by slowly and in discomfort. and now here she was getting ready for the symphony and with a decsion to make. did she change the cruel bra, to some other evil? it was when she was telling a sympathetic sarita about her bra wounds that she came upon a solution. "cotten balls!" she exclaimed and rushed to the bathroom to try out her genius. the first cotton ball placed between her chest and the vindictive wire was such a soft and soothing relief, and there was such an abundance of fluffy little obliging cotten balls at her disposal that she stuffed in five or six before she was satisfied and heaved a sigh of bliss. in the car and on her way to pick up selina she felt the cotten balls shift and knew that it was not a perfect solution. in fact through out the night when she had a chance to do some adjusting, she would find cotten balls in other areas of her bra, and even some that had escaped the bra all together. she had some private amusing thoughts in the bathroom stall of the orpheum thinking of where she might have lost cotten balls along the way. "i never thought i would ever stuff my bra" she laughed to herself. she felt a bond with laura ingalls wilder and her apples. that night after she had undressed she took up the pink lacy bra, marched into the kitchen and tossed it in the trash. "that should have been done a long long time ago." she thought ruefully as she climbed under the covers of her big fluffy and warm duvet. her last thought before falling asleep was of the new adventures tomorrows bra would bring.