Installment Twenty-Six

A post-fifty female potential employee is like a decaf latté: why bother?

There's always the Facebook age strategy to fight ageism. In the area designated for birthdays, one's year of birth is usually left out. Lying about my age isn't an option, given my inability to tell a lie wearing a straight, aged face.

Let's be real here: a woman can exercise ten, fifteen even twenty years off her body, but her face never lies. Unless, of course, it's been nipped, tucked, stretched, Botoxed or all of them. The ropy neck and the spotted hands are dead giveaways. And rigid calorie reduction for weight loss usually equals a gaunt face.

But speaking of exercise, which I wasn't going to because I feel demoralized enough these days without fretting about my sodium-packed waistline, I decided if I can't get hired, I can at least work out. I signed up at my local “Y”.

It seemed like a no-brainer. Then I remembered I have no exercise clothes. New running shoes despite the thousand and one options available to boggle the mind, was an easy shopping expedition.

My feet aren't fat and lumpy.

Buying gym gear, it would seem to me, has now replaced the bathing suit nightmare as the clothing purchase absolutely guaranteed to induce the biggest nervous breakdown in women (those of us without eating or over-exercising disorders.)

Gym bras, in particular, are the stuff of horror films for menopausal women whose boobs are suddenly the stuff of zaftig women. Without any clasp on them ('oh, just put it right on over your head'), they require Houdini-like maneuvers to pull off.

Or so I discovered yesterday when I became trapped in a workout bra that slipped on easily, but would not come off unless I was a Chinese gymnast.

"Help me!" I cried feebly from my change room at the giant sports store.

Since no one had assisted me since I entered the giant store, visions of sleeping in the cubicle all night choking on a sports bra whirled through my distraught mind.

Short of throwing my neck out of whack to get out of the damn bra, (and this before even working out in one where presumably sweat would impede the process, not just old bodies counter-intuitive for this kind of clothing), I didn't know what to do.

Finally, a man—of course it had to be a man—asked "is someone in there?"

"Yes!!!" I said, breathless from my exertions. "Can you please get me a woman sales clerk?"

"Right away, madam," he replied, as if he was speaking to his mother.

I thought there could be nothing worse than sounding like someone else's mother until I caught sight of myself in the mirror, wrapped in a bra, wearing the spandex exercise pants I had also grabbed on my way into the change room.

How convenient, I thought at the time, that I was already half way to strangling myself.