Oh God.

What has happened to me? How has the gap between my self-perception and the funhouse reality of the fitting room become so unfathomably large?

It is now time like every other female blogger who has ever lived to write about bathing suit shopping. Let me sum it up like this. They need to put counselors in those little rooms.

I’m a swimmer. Not a Diana Nyad kind of swimmer but an older gal who takes a Masters Swimming class. I wear goggles and one fin and try to keep up with women who are half my age. If I was a cat, I could be all their mothers. Seriously. Reflect on that.

Like I told my husband tonight, it’s one thing in the pool where they’re flip turning and outpacing me to beat the band, where I am older than EVERYONE, even my friend, Karen, who is six months younger than me, but the shower is another thing altogether.

It is in the shower of my Master Swim Class that I figured out that the Brazilian wax has a shaving counterpart. This is news to me. WTF, I think. First of all, who shaves in the shower after swimming. How often does a person need to shave? Often, I guess, if you are shaving that.

I am so fundamentally a rube. Or is it Rube. I can’t remember. I’ve missed so many memos, I feel like I live in the steppes of Russia. Is it ever possible to catch up?

So the suit was black with a white band under the bodice (note the use of such a nice modest word). It was impossibly horrible but the only thing in my size which turned out to be two sizes larger than I thought. At the pool, I sought out women who were even larger and whose hideous suits sported flowers and bows. An essential element to self-esteem is finding others in worse situations.

I could be fatter, I think. Small solace.

After frolicking around in my hideous suit with my granddaughter and husband, I took off to swim laps. I put on my pink goggles and started. I had my Diana Nyad bracelet on, the one that says Cuba to Florida, and I swam what I think is my perfect stroke. And it was luscious. And for those moments, the preposterous appearance of my bathing suit mattered not. I was a dolphin in the water. Beautiful, sleek. Untroubled.

It didn’t last but I don’t care. Who gives a fuck?