All I wanted was a little padded, push-up, underwire pick-me-up

Last night while playing an aggravating game of Aggravation with my younger son, I got so carried away, I consumed a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips. Sodium count — 2,400 milligrams. This morning the bags under my eyes look like breasts. 

But it’s nice to finally have a pair.

To be fair, I have breasts. That they’re as voluptuous as the Gerber Baby’s is what bothers me. 

In order to combat my despair at not being better endowed, I’m constantly on the prowl for the latest fuel-injected miracles of mammary maximization. And you know what that means — 

I’ve got to have my Victoria’s Secret catalog and its selection of push up, padded, underwire wonders.

I’ve also got to have electrical power in order to shop online. But since we live on a farm and frequently forgo that modern convenience, ordering is not always possible. 

I could drive fifty minutes to the closest Victoria’s Secret, but I hate to do that. Particularly since I already spend too much time carting around, my kids — AKA, the two boobs I gave birth to.

No, when it’s time for a little padded, push-up pick-me-up, I do what I did recently — throw the kids in the car and drive to the local Old Navy. Not because Old Navy sells bras, but because I needed a rouse to get them to accompany me to the Kohl’s next door. 

Nothing elicits cooperation like the lure of camouflage print cargo pants.

Ten minutes and $100 on bogus military attire later, my boys were ready for buzz cuts and Marine Corps boot camp. 

But not before I found a bra.

I should’ve made a beeline for the Intimates department, but I made the mistake of first hitting home furnishings. Like most women, I can spend hours shopping for housewares.

But like most kids, mine have a 15-minute department store best behavior maximum before the threat of losing their video games and several vital organs wear offs and they go back to being themselves.

I’d wasted at least that amount of time mooning over some sunflower-bedecked oven mitts when I heard scuffling, shouting, and the general mayhem of unsupervised young men.

My young men.

To my horror, my sons were engaged in a full-blown Sponge Bob Squarepants vs. Washington Redskins pillow fight in the main aisle of the store. To make matters worse, several other kids had chosen sides and were cheering them on.

I flashed on Lord of the Flies just as fluff began to fly out of Sponge Bob’s yellow head. 

One of the salespeople noticed too. I made a big show of how the boys were going to pay for the pillow, but I kept thinking — 

If I don’t find the perfect bra, I could simply tape the cotton cascading out of Sponge Bob’s cranium to my chest and call it cleavage.

So, while my eldest moaned about the mortification of waiting for his mom to find a bra, I finally began scouring the lingerie aisles. I was so intent on this endeavor that I didn’t see what my youngest was doing. 

I did, however, hear about it. As in, “Can you believe that boy’s behavior?” 

I knew without looking that my fellow shoppers were referring to my small son. And I knew just what he was doing, too.

Slowly and sneakily, my kid was walking up and down the aisles, “tweaking” the Maidenforms and Balis and beaming like, well, like a little boy in a bra department. 

He must have felt me watching him because he turned, glared at me for daring to derail his meteoric rise to juvenile delinquency, and shouted, 

“What’s the problem? It’s not like there’s BREASTS in them!”

Ultimately, I found a cute little number and started hunting for some matching panties. But when my little guy slipped on a bra with cups so big each could’ve contained a football and announced,

“Hey mom, this is better than a ball bag!”

it was one incident in Intimates too many. Rather than wait for security to escort us, we departed the department store sans skivvies.

Unfortunately, I never got a bra. But I think I’m in for a whole different kind of lift the day the bus leaves for the Marine Corps Youth Boot Camp. 

And my kids are sitting on it.