on buying spaaaaandex

This afternoon I bought spandex running tights (pictured on woman to left running near unidentified marsh at dawn). They are sexy and black and completely silly. And, as some of you may know, I will need them as I train thru the dead of a New York winter for a marathon in April.

Now, a word on spandex. You see, buying these spandex -- pardon, "running tights," as the gentleman at the store corrected me -- officially makes me a mature adult because I resisted giggling during the entire fitting room and sales interaction. Sppaaaandex, as we chimed derisively in high school, was not what the cool girls wore. And we certainly wouldn't let boys see us in the figure-hugging, tapered leg running apparel. no no.

So when the tights were shown to me at the Park Slope location of Jackrabbit, by a young gentleman whose bio shows a number of achievements including lead singer, actor and Ironman athlete, I was embarrassed at first. But I quickly became distracted by the frenzy with which he separated all of the same-looking black tights, seriously suggesting some over the others. Later, by the time I was carrying seven pairs of black tights with inexplicably varied price points into the fitting room, I think my friend Sabrina and I were thoroughly perplexed.

When I emerged from the fitting room to ask her opinion, I was confronted by 3 sets of eyes scrutinizing my Sugoi-clad legs: the salesman's, another muscular looking blonde salesgirl carrying a broom, and Sabrina's. Normally, in this situation, you might assume that a female person with a real body would become self-conscious. You're exposed in tights. There ain't hiding nuthin' in the stretchy, skintight business of winter sport leggings. But I stood there, in all my spandexy glory, pulling the tights up in the crotch and wiggling around to get the seams in the right place.

Everyone approved of the fit. And so it was, at the store for running apparel, that I became an adult.