Susie Dunham

...Hawaii, without a bathing suit, is virtually impossible.

To celebrate the monumental event of our 35th anniversary, Bossman and I are going to Hawaii on that oh-so-talked-about second honeymoon. We’re going to schlep our 56- and 54-year-old bodies to beaches half a world away.

It might be noteworthy, at this point, to say that my body is not the body that stood at the front of the church in 1971. Not even close. Truth be known, Bossman isn’t legally married to almost half of me.

We’re going to fly for days (well, at least half a day) to get to Hawaii and its beaches. We’re going to the Big Island. Not Oahu, or Maui, but the BIG Island. Not that I’m self-conscious about The Awful Bathing Suit Issue (to be referred to as TABSI from now on), but the BIG Island? And beaches? I usually convince Bossman to go to a beach on a cold day so there’s no worry about TABSI.

I hear there are no cold days in Hawaii. Not even on the BIG Island.

I’m toast.

A few pounds have been shed, but not enough to make me comfortable with TABSI on a beach, near a beach, or looking at a beach from eighty-seven miles away through binoculars.

I’m going to suck it up, though. I’ll be darned if I’m going to fly halfway to the moon and not swim in the Pacific Ocean off that stinkin’ BIG Island.

So I decided to buy a bathing suit. I just wasn’t going to enter a store.

Fate was on my side (and in my mailbox) in the form of a Lands' End catalog profiling their Virtual Model. I’d forgotten that I used the Virtual Model this past Christmas when I was shopping for long underwear for my 76-year old Mom.

This model becomes YOU. Color her hair and eyes. Shape the nose, mouth, and eyes to your own. Give her your hairstyle, whether she likes it or not.

Saved by the Internet! I won’t have to try the blasted things on in stores with the possibility of a human seeing me. I can have my Virtual Model do it for me.

Perfect.

I found the site and started trying suits on my model.

“Geesh. She doesn’t look half bad in that one.” I was feeling pretty good about TABSI.

Then I remembered the model had my Mom’s measurements.

Blast-it-all bad word.

I measured myself in a dark closet and posted the results.

What the heck happened to her? She looks like a TeleTubby.

Nuts.

I clicked on everything I wanted in a suit: industrial-strength bra, all-over slimming, complete coverage.

My choices went from 75 to only one, and that suit looked like a flowered beach umbrella.

I started over.

My model didn’t want to try on any other suits. She was having a bad TABSI day.

I soothed her by telling her it didn’t matter that she was built for comfort and not for speed. I told her that she’d never hurt her virtual grandchildren with sharp pointy parts and that she was a good person who deserved to wear an attractive bathing suit and have a marvelous time at a virtual Big Island of her own with her Bossman.

It worked.

She tried on more suits. It was tedious at times, but the two of us finally made a decision, and I took a second mortgage out on the house to purchase one.

It should be here next week.

That should give me enough time to convince myself to get out of that closet and onto the Hawaiian beaches with Bossman.

You can say aloha to Susie at MiSuzi@aol.com.