Welcome to Giant Butt Land, Population: You

Perhaps that was a bit harsh. After all, I never would have discovered the enormity of my butt (at least as long as it's located in this country) were it not for a fabulous recent shopping experience which I am still reveling in the memory of. I was on a quest for running shoes, what with the recent arrival of spring and wanting to shed the kilos of hospitality I packed on during those dark cold months. I've never gone running, but hey, it sounded like a good idea. I hear that other people do it all the time. So anyhoo, I went on this rather brief shoe quest, disappointed that nothing resembling a running shoe could be found, and as a last-ditch effort headed to the Puma store on Stefan cel Mare, the main drag in town.

Now wait -- I can just hear you saying "Puma store?!" My town isn't posh, I swear. I have no idea where this store came from or how it stays in business.

The shoes at Puma were very fancy, as were the prices. Much too fancy for a lowly volunteer such as myself. There were 400 lei flip-flops, for godssake! (For those of you who don't think in constant lei/dollar exchange rate calculations, that's $30.) So yeah, ix-nay on the Puma store. That's when I decided to pop in to the clothes store next door. I'd passed it countless times on my way to work but always dismissed it as probably being horribly expensive or horribly, well, local-style. But oh happy day, the sight that awaited me! Racks of jeans. Shelves with stacks of soft and brightly-colored shirts. And I could touch everything!!!

Let me explain. I realize I'm basically describing one of your routine trips to Target, during which you probably don't -- unlike some of us -- rush from wall to wall exclaiming and flinging tank tops about. But you have to understand that buying clothes in MD, for someone accustomed to the western shopping experience, is a bit of an ordeal. You walk into a small shop where clothes featuring sequins and scandalous cut-outs and a smattering of nonsensical English in metallic print (recently saw a children's jumper with "degrade girl" emblazoned on it) are hung up on the walls. If you want to see something you ask the invariably surly young woman sitting on a stool in the corner, and she uses her giant hook thing to get it down for you. If you want to try something on, sometimes there's a sheet strung up in one corner for you to hide behind, sometimes not. Most magazines (stores) are like this, too; you have to ask the woman at the counter to hand you cheese, eggs, bread, whatever, from out of the case or from the shelves behind her. For those of you not grasping how intimidating this can be, imagine being a wide-eyed new volunteer who stumbles over the word "milk" faced with the task of grocery shopping. Take me for example: my Russian has gotten pretty decent, and yet only a week ago I was at the bakery a block from my house, picking up a loaf of my favorite bread, when I decided I'd like some strawberry yoghurt too. What did I manage to say? "I'd like some heel flavor yoghurt, please."

"Heel", "strawberry", whatever. Sound the same to me.

Oh dearie, I've totally gotten off topic. My butt, yes. So I'm in the Aridon store or whatever it's called, making a small mountain of shirts (so cute! so not local-looking! not too expensive!), already justifying my purchases in my head considering the scorcher of the summer we have ahead of us and the fact that with my limited wardrobe, my clothes are wearing out a lot faster, for example the pair of jeans that split across the butt the other day. That pair represented, like, 30 percent of my wardrobe!

So yeah, fling fling fling, so excited that I can touch and unfold and play with everything with no middle-man (woman) interfering, and there was a bank of changing rooms in the back just like in a -- dare I say? -- normal store, tra la la la la........

So then I began browsing through the jeans racks, squealing over their cuteness, excited to replace the holey butt jeans, when I noticed that every pair was the exact same size. Which is to say 26. Which is to say, the circumference of one of my thighs. I sorted my way to the end of the rack, hoping for a little variance, and came up with a couple 27s. The salesgirl, bless her non-surly heart, offered to hunt down a bigger size seeing my perplex...tion? -ment? Oh lord I'm forgetting my mother tongue. Whatever the word, she went to fetch bigger jeans, and then came back with a pair only a little bigger. I sent her off one more time, and 10 minutes later I was standing very sadly in the dressing room, squeezed sausage-like into a pair of 34s. Sigh. And what of my mountain of cute shirts? They, alas, were also made for elves. Why, why?! Surely somewhere in this country there's a store for girls like me? Yeah, probably in the capital. I can see it now: "Stout and American".

F-this. I'm going to the Old Navy website, where the sizes go to 20 and my butt will be amongst friends.