You think you're hot, but you're not

Yesterday I wore a black & red print silky tunic and black leggings to work. Of course, my bra fitter apron covered up most of this outfit, but I thought I looked HOT. So hot that I took a (lousy) photo of myself before I left for work. All day long, every time I caught sight of myself in a mirror (lots of mirrors in a department store), I smiled because I looked so HOT. I was in a great mood that day, and one of our cutest young associates told me, "That tunic looks so cute on you, Miss Jean!"

During that afternoon, I was walking through the shoe department when a customer summoned me to help her find brown shoes. I haven't been trained in that department but since it's next door to lingerie, I help out there quite often. This customer was an obese woman, about my age, wearing a short leopard print blouse, dark brown leggings, and chunky gold jewelry. It was not a flattering outfit - nothing I would wear in public - that showed all her (many) fat rolls. I brought her 3 sizes each of 3 pair of shoes and after a lot of dithering, she picked out 2 pairs of shoes. All the time we worked together, she seemed very anxious and was babbling about how she had to have these shoes today...like right now. At one point she said, "This has to be right, it's for a TV show in one hour, and I still have to eat lunch and do something about this hair (at that moment, styled in a messy I Dream of Jeannie updo). That statement brought me up short. I thought, "Please tell me you're not wearing this outfit on television," just as she said that this was the outfit she was going to wear on television. Eventually she paid for her shoes and left. I thought (as we southerners say of misguided acquaintances), "Bless her heart."

So, today I transferred the photo of me in that hot outfit to my computer, expecting to see Jennifer Aniston's body with my head on it. But what I saw was my same old body with my same old head on it, the head obscured by the camera flash. That was very humbling.