"Trying On Bathing Suits... And A Little Boy's Help!"

The Enemy...

I haven't bought a swim suit in twenty years.

It's not like I can't swim, I can. It is not like I don't like sitting "fashionably"sunning ( or burning ) myself around a hotel or gym pool.  I do.

Well, maybe not fashionably!

I do have a bathing suit that I've worn for many years in spite of the fact that it embarrasses the hell out of my wife whenever I am out in public wearing it. I just don't spend a lot of time that way. It is usually when I'm on a vacation that I acquiesce to trying on new bathing suits. I'm not at all as interested in clothes as I was as a youth. Maybe, it was all about the dating game... maybe.

Well, while spending a week in Southern California at a hotel that had a wonderful outdoor patio and pool, I decided to check out some "beach wear." I knew that I'd have to buy some suntan lotion eventually for the air show that I was gonna attend late that week, so why not...

Maybe, I'll purchase an entire beach assemble!

I didn't take long for an attitude change as I went from one store rack to another looking for something wearable. Suffice it to say, I was not in "bikini shape,"as each mirror in the fitting room cruelly reminded me. It was getting to the point where I really didn't want to walk out the door to crack another mirror. Oddly enough,  my timing was about the same as it was for this ten or twelve year old kid that shared the same mirror with me. I don't remember what he was trying on, but it seemed to me that he was also eyeing my sartorial disgust with the mirror. Three times I came out and three times he came out of his fitting room at the same time.

Wearing a suit that was more akin to a boxer's trunks, than it was a swimming suit, it was dark blue with lots of small light blue stars. Staring at a body that is twenty pounds over the limit and knowing I was really expecting a miracle to happen, the slender, dark haired, dark eyed boy looked over to me  smiled and said...

"That one really looks good on you!"

I smiled back, I'm sure, rather suspiciously, and said thanks. As he turned and reentered his changing room, I wondered what that was all about. Was he tired of seeing me so disgusted? Did he feel I needed some kind of approval struggling so with my mirrored image in trunks that made me look and feel like a sonar buoy? Why would he care? Maybe, he was just trying to relate on a manly level in a way that maybe he couldn't with his father. Maybe, he was my guardian angel in the form of a little boy helping me make a decision I wouldn't trust any guardian angel to make... just being in a guardian angel outfit. Maybe this, maybe that!

I stood there for a minute, twitching and blinking at myself in the mirror, dumbfounded.

"What the hell," I said to myself, "Maybe, he just really liked the way I looked in them."

So I bought them... and if anyone complains, especially my wife, I'll just say I'm keeping them because a California angel told me I look good in them.

Indeed, the mind is a terrible thing.

Copyright 2014/Ben Bensen III