Fix My Breasts

The big all-school variety show is coming up this weekend.

Kelly is beside herself with excitement.

She's going to be a mermaid.

For the last 2 months, we've been at weekly rehearsals for the "Mermaid Number", and she's been doing lunch-time rehearsals for the Chorus.

I think I'd written about the Mermaid Costume Follies. Fortunately, after I put together 16 quilted mermaid tail fins, my work was done. I shouldn't have worried. There were plenty of other willing hands to put together the remainder of the costumes.

On Sunday, they had their last rehearsal, turning the street out in front of Julie's house into a big taped-off stage.

And then, once they'd gotten all their moves right, we went inside, for the final fittings of all the mermaid costumes.

They looked DARLING! I'm amazed at how cute everything turned out. But there's just a little bit more to do. The costume consists of this long extravagant mermaid tail, worn over top of a flesh-toned body suit. Sewn to the body suit is a little bandeau of stretch velour in a variety of undersea-costume colors, as a sort of bikini top. The finishing-touch job was to do a bit of hand-sewing to tack the "bikini top" up on the bodice of the body suit, to make it look less like a strip of elastic wrapped around their body.

Kelly was getting her costume on to show Daddy after supper on Sunday, when she looked up at me, and loudly, in a lull in the conversation, announced "Mom, you've got to do SOMETHING to fix my BREASTS"

"what?" I ask, as all the boys stop chewing and look over at her.

"You know, mom. Fix that part that covers the BOOBS."

Say WHAT? I hope you're not using that sort of language around school, honey.

Ohhhhhh, you mean fix your "BRA"? Or the "BODICE" of your suit? Yeah, let's make sure we understand what all those B-words really are, ok, and which ones we might want to use more, and which ones we might want to use *less*.

Here she is, breasts all fixed up fine.