Buying a bathing suit

My sister sent this to me, it appealed to me so much I think it's worth sharing....

The Bathing Suit (by a middle-age woman unknown)

 When I was a child in the 1960s, the bathing suit for the mature

 figure was-boned, trussed and reinforced, not so much sewn as

 engineered. They were built to hold back and uplift, and they did a good job.

 Today's stretch fabrics are designed for the prepubescent girl with a

 figure carved from a potato chip.

 The mature woman has a choice ˜ she can either go up front to the

 maternity department and try on a floral suit with a skirt, coming

 away looking like a hippopotamus that escaped from Disney's Fantasia,

 or she can wander around every run-of-the-mill department store trying

 to make a sensible choice from what amounts to a designer range of

 fluorescent rubber bands.

 What choice did I have? I wandered around, made my sensible choice and

 entered the chamber of horrors known as the fitting room. The first

 thing I noticed was the extraordinary tensile strength of the stretch

 material. The Lycra used in bathing costumes was developed, I believe,

 by NASA to launch small rockets from a slingshot, which gives the

 added bonus that if you manage to actually lever yourself into one,

 you would be protected from shark attacks ˜ any shark taking a swipe

 at your passing midriff would immediately suffer whiplash.

 I fought my way into the bathing suit, but as I twanged the shoulder

 strap in place I gasped in horror: my boobs had disappeared!

 Eventually, I found one boob cowering under my left armpit. It took a

 while to find the other. At last I located it flattened beside my

 seventh rib.

 The problem is that modern bathing suits have no bra cups. The mature

 woman is meant to wear her boobs spread across her chest like a speed

 bump. I realigned my speed bump and lurched toward the mirror to take

 a full view assessment.

 The bathing suit fitted all right, but unfortunately it only fitted

 those bits of me willing to stay inside it. The rest of me oozed out

 rebelliously from top, bottom and sides. I looked like a lump of

 Playdoh wearing undersized cling wrap.

 As I tried to work out where all those extra bits had come from, the

 prepubescent sales girl popped her head through the curtain, 'Oh,

 there you are,' she said, admiring the bathing suit.

 I replied that I wasn't so sure and asked what else she had to show me.

 I tried on a cream crinkled one that made me look like a lump of

 masking tape, and a floral two-piece that gave the appearance of an

 oversized napkin in a serving ring.

 I struggled into a pair of leopard-skin bathers with ragged frills and

 came out looking like Tarzan's Jane, pregnant with triplets and having

 a rough day.

 I tried on a black number with a midriff and looked like a jellyfish

 in mourning.

 I tried on a bright pink pair with such a high cut leg I thought I

 would have to wax my eyebrows to wear them.

 Finally, I found a suit that fitted ...a two-piece affair with a

 shorts-style bottom and a loose blouse-type top. It was cheap,

 comfortable, and bulge-friendly, so I bought it. My ridiculous search

 had a successful outcome, I figured.

 When I got it home, I found a label that read: 'Material might become

 transparent in water'.

 So, if you happen to be on the beach or near any other body of water

 this year and I'm there too, I'll be the one in cut-off jeans and a

 T-shirt!

 You'd better be laughing or rolling on the floor by this time. Life

 isn't about how to survive the storm, but how to dance in the rain.

 With or without a bathing suit.