The nylon python

 Ever since I can remember, I have been afflicted with the kind of shoulders a bra strap must slip off. It's annoying, so annoying in fact that I recall my sister-in-law schooling my niece on how dreadful my slipping straps are and how she must take care not to be like Aunty Kylie. If I have had no other use in life, I have demonstrated the sartorial horror of the falling strap.

In order to combat this problem, I sometimes wear a racer back sports bra. Now the issue with these is that they don't have any clips so they have to go on over my head.

Forgive me the technicalities but I need to set this scene.

Even though it is now April and officially mid-autumn, Sydney is still warm and humid so sticky skin is very much a normal state of being.

This morning I was already running late for work when I finished showering. I knew it was going to be tricky getting a bra on so I left it to almost last, trying to make sure I was at the lowest possible level of clammy.

I dragged it over my head and immediately knew I was in trouble. It was twisted and coiled like an old telephone cord. The band, which should sit flat against ribcage was twisted and stuck and the rest of the fabric was twisted and stuck with it. At the front I could drag it into a semi-correct position but the tension caused by the twisting pulled it up so that it was cutting under my arms and barely below my collar at the back.

I twisted and squirmed, arms reaching over my head then up from my waist. I couldn't reach it with more than a finger tip. I just could not get the thing unstuck. Then more I twisted, the sweatier I got. It was a losing battle. Should I take it off and start over? I was already late and there was no guarantee I would be any more successful.

No, I would gather my stuff and head off. Maybe I could wiggle it down in the car. 

At the first set of lights, which can be a long, long wait I dragged my shirt up a bit to try freeing the dreadful fabric coil from my armpits. I wasn't exposed in any indecent way but it was still pretty awkward when I made eye contact with the young tradie in the ute next to me. 

Onto plan B.

For the rest of the drive, the nylon python coiled around me, cutting in oddly to make new asymmetrical shapes of my body, rolling itself tighter and creeping into positions bras should not go.

When I pulled up at work, there was just a small chance that I could clock on in the five minute grace period. Ignoring the nylon python and the synthetic uniform shirt clinging and creeping up my back, I grabbed my stuff and high tailed it to the clock, hoping not to meet anybody in the lift.

I clocked in and said a very quick hello to my office buddy, hoping my clattering bags would distract her from my appearance, then back tracked to the bathroom.

Now that I had calmed down, clocked in and cooled off in the air conditioning, it took just a quick hook of a finger and a little smooth down to restore comfort and shape.

The body strangling nylon python had been subdued into boring bra-dom.