Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon (repost)

This is a repost from January 7, 2010. I figured I wouldn't be up to blogging today, so I'm taking the easy way out and sharing a story of a traumatic event that happened in my life before I ever "knew" any of you!

It was about the second week of June in the year 2003. I was living just outside of the Walt Disney World property line near Orlando, Florida at the time, and in need of a vacation. My mom flew me home to Oregon for my favorite golf tournament of the year. Nothing like a sunny humid-free weekend of free pizza and various drinks!

The Abby's Golf Tournament weekend kicks off every year with a dinner at the Country Club and this was the first time my mom and step-dad were going to bring me to that event. Normally I was just around for the actual golfing on the weekends and maybe a happy hour type night. To go to the dinner I had to have appropriate attire. I didn't really have that in my wardrobe anymore now that I was a Florida girl - so off to the mall we went!

Let's have a little bit o' background now, shall we? Living in Orlando, we didn't have a Bon Marche. My girl friends and I would go shopping at Old Navy, GAP, American Eagle, Tommy Hilfiger .... the places that cater to the girls of in-between age that do not want to buy "adult" type clothing from a department store just yet. And now back to my story......

Lacking the proper clothes for a country club dinner, my mom said she'd take me shopping for a new outfit or two. Let me also add that she really flew me home so she and my grandpa could try to convince me to move back home to Oregon, so there was A LOT of spoiling going on! Living in such a big metropolis (ha!) we went to the mall to hit the Bon Marche (this is pre-Macy's days). I remember grabbing quite a few different clothes to try on. Tops, bottoms, dresses, capris. I like to take more clothes than I need into a dressing room so I have options to choose from. I had found a section of Union Bay clothes and was so happy! In college I always wore Union Bay clothing. They fit me so great. I could just grab my size and go because they seemed to be made for my body. Naturally I did the same thing and happily trotted off to the dressing room over in the "Women" section where my mom was shopping.

Brace yourself - it is about to get really ugly!!

I really had my eye on these adorable capris. Casual enough for my Florida life, yet I could accessorize them up to make them classy enough for the dinner. My right leg went in first, and I started to get nervous. I was confident that once both legs were up and I was zipped up I was going to look super hot! Left leg in, and my nerves picked up even more. And then I tried to zip. They didn't fit?!?!?!? What was going on?

I ripped that pair off and grabbed the next, and then the next. Nothing was fitting! By now my mom could sense that something was going on in my dressing room. I let her come in and proceeded to show her how these clothes just weren't made properly. They ALWAYS fit. Something was either wrong with the manufacturing or they had the tags all mixed up. Obviously there was a mistake somewhere. I clearly couldn't have gained weight. I worked outside in the Florida sun sweating my ass off every day. I walked usually 8 miles during the course of a single working day. I was pushing around insanely heavy rafts filled with water and guests. I was like a solid tan mass of muscle. So if you put two and two together .... it only made sense that the clothing company messed up!

The look on my mom's face. Was she going to laugh at me? Was she going to cry? I had never seen this look before. And then came these words that are forever burned in my memory:

Ronda, your body is changing. You're not a little girl anymore. You're becoming a woman now. You've developed hips.

WHAT??????? Me? Woman? Hips? Are you kidding me? I stood there in stunned silence. I couldn't really absorb what she was saying. The rest of the shopping experience becomes a blur. I ended up getting new clothes that fit my new hips, but all that stays clear is that little speech from my mom. My body changed without my permission.

When I got back to Florida and wasn't as freaked out, I talked to my girl friends about it. As it turns out they had all had pretty much the same exact conversations with their moms! Looking back at it, I guess wearing horribly made costumes designed for tiny Asian girls, and shopping at those "in-between" stores, we just never even noticed.

As I sit here now I am shaking my head around trying to get that whole dressing room incident out of my head. It won't leave!!!

The Rae Girls 7 years later, at the Abby's golf tournament

**I chose to share this story today because the incident happened to come up while my mom and I were shopping after work last night. This time I was joking about it and talking about clothes I used to wear "pre-hips". Sigh. I've finally accepted my curves, but still!