This post is rated TV-MA for mature content.

A woman came into the store a few days ago (I happened to be working alone because the girls were in Florida) with a strange problem. She told me she had bought a bra in our store (she pulled down the front of her dress to show me the bra in question) and she loved it, but she couldn't understand how to adjust the straps.

"Do you pull forward or backward? I can't seem to get them tighter," she explained. She pulled down more of her dress and turned around so that I could access the offending straps. With a smile, I adjusted them for her saying, "You pull the plastic piece forward."

"Oh," she said, pulling her dress back into place. "Thank you."

Before you ask, this is not a newfangled type of bra. The straps are exactly the same as you would find on any other. OK, fine. Perhaps she has never worn a bra before despite the fact that she is very clearly older than I am. Hey, we get a lot of granola-munching hippies in Park Slope, it could happen. What I find harder to believe is that she couldn't ask a girlfriend/sister/mother/female yoga instructor, but instead had to come all the way back to the store where she bought the confounding device and ask me, a complete stranger. And if all else fails, don't you think she could have figured out that if she pushes the plastic bit one direction and it makes the straps looser, logically, pushing it in the other direction would make it tighter?

Of course, I do this all day long. Well, ok, generally I adjust the straps BEFORE the bra is bought, but still... I spend a great deal of time fitting bras. Sometimes the buyer is shy, which I understand, and will only let me see them when they have the bra on and want to be certain it fits correctly. Others are...umm...how do I put this delicately?...less than shy. Like the woman who never once closed the fitting room curtain while she tried one bra after another, and would not let me leave her side for more than a second, whether I wanted to see her naked bosom or not.

The weird thing is: I really don't care. Maybe the first time I was a little shocked, but after two years, it just doesn't faze me.

Which is why I thought nothing of it when a woman came in and asked me to adjust her bra straps in the middle of the store.

Am I jaded? Living in NYC can dull the sharp edge of shock and awe, I just didn't expect it to happen quite so soon. Can anything still surprise me?

And then I saw this. Watch it at your own risk, the song will get stuck in your head for days. But it's funny as hell. Not that Hell is all that funny...



As to my calling Riker "beard guy", I could have said "smug git" but I wasn't sure you would know to whom I was referring. Oh, I kid, Riker's not that bad. But he looks considerably more like a smug git with that beard than without.

This post has gone to a very nerdy place. I swear, I always start with the best of intentions, but pretty soon it's comic books this, and Star Trek that. It's true what they say, "You can take the nerd out of the blog, but then you don't get any posts."

Once again, I digress. There was so much I wanted to say, and I've wasted it on twaddle!

I was going to welcome Jenna back (Welcome back Jenna!), and tell her about going back to New Orleans, and how surreal it felt because it at first appeared to have been mostly untouched, but the harder I looked, the more I found that it was deeply scarred. Or maybe I'm the one who's changed...who can say? I was also going to talk about a recent Facebook debacle. I wrote a great deal of it in an e-mail to my mother whose only response was "Oh, Jules..." Which is, perhaps, why I am discouraged. Also, I really don't know who reads this blog. NOTHING IS SAFE ANYMORE!

Oh, this just sounds worse all the time, I should explain before you think I did something heinous.

The problem with joining Facebook is that certain, erm, people can find you. Specifically, ex-boyfriends and ex-wanna-be-boyfriends. The latter have proven a little more resourceful and perseverent (is that a word, or did I just make something up?). Perhaps because they never got the chance to, er, sample the actual product, and therefore don't understand they ain't missin' much.

Now I've gone to a dirty place, and I really didn't mean to. Believe me, I tried several different phrases all of which were worse than "sample the actual product" so let me again clear this up and tell you that by "sample" I mean "date."

I should really quit while I'm (relatively) ahead before this post goes any further awry.

Better luck next time.

Jules