Red Alone

   If you said it is not possible to blush when all alone, I would believe you except that there have been two incidences in my life in which I did blush with no witnesses. And when I asked Mike if he ever recalled blushing when no one else was around, he said it happens on a daily basis to him! (the very day that I asked him he said he had stopped at a gated entrance to a company – the guard at the gate gave him a clipboard and a form to fill out; one of the questions was the tag number on his vehicle which Mike does not know by memory, so he got out of the truck to look at the tag, and the truck started to move away since Mike had left it in drive! He caught the truck, looked around, no one had seen what happened, but Mike knew he was blushing from embarrassment anyway!) - So perhaps this phenomenon is not quite the anomaly I used to think it was!

     The first time I ever blushed alone was in the bathroom of the Cary Hotel when I worked in Chautauqua. I do not recall which of the two summers it was – the one before senior year in high school or the one before freshman year of college, but that does not matter – it could have happened either summer because it was the same me for both stints.

It must have been my one day of the week off, as I was all alone in the dorm one morning, with everyone else in the kitchen working, and I was taking my time in the bathtub – a claw tub with no shower - and then washing my hair under the tap after bathing. I dried off and started dressing, still in the bathroom.

     The mirror over the sink was right there, and I happened to see myself in the mirror and noticed that something was not quite right. I couldn't figure out what it was, and told myself it was nothing and started to put on my shirt when another glance in the mirror told me something was definitely strange , but what was it?

     And then I figured it out.

     And I could feel the blood rush to my head.

     I saw in the mirror that my face was bright red. An emotion had gone through me - humiliating embarrassment.

     Quickly looking around the room, I saw the door was shut; there was no window; no one else could see me.

     But I had blushed!

     What was wrong was that my hook-less, over-the-head bra, something made of just plain material with no shape to the front at all and perfect for someone of my tiny tiny endowments.....this bra was on backwards! The thin back strap had adequately covered said tiny endowments, and once it was in place that way had not felt at all strange!

     It was not until I caught a look in the mirror that I realized something was amiss!

     I was a female of so little breasts that I could wear my bra backwards.

     In spite of that discovery, I turned the bra around.

     Then I finished dressing, left the bathroom, and reluctantly went out to face the world.

     And the (sometimes all too frequent!) memory of that incident always takes me right back to that bathroom and the reflection in the mirror, and embarrassment goes through me once again!

      Sarah has suggested that when we take our daughter/mother storytelling act on the road we tell our little endowments in bras stories in tandem - what a good sport she is!

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