Our Comfort Zone (Or Discomfort Zone)

My almost five-year-old granddaughter walks in the door with her footed jammies stuffed into her snow boots. With a tremendous tug we finally get the boots off. She runs to the living room to play. What could be better than spending all day Saturday wearing your jammies?

Never mind the fact that she won’t be able to play outside in the snow later on this afternoon. Never mind the fact that she won’t be able to run errands with me.

She’s my jammie girl. And she would go to school every day in her pajamas – if her mother let her. And I can understand how she feels tucked in her snuggly fleece. It’s kind of like having your blankie wrapped around you all day long.

We’ve all had days in our comfort zone, right?

My almost forty-five year old sister gets dressed for a trip to town – bra and all. (She works at home- and I swear, wears her jammies all day long too.) Her car whizzes down the street and out onto the highway. A couple miles farther and she begins to squirm back and forth – trying to adjust the position of her bra. It doesn’t feel quite right – probably because she hasn’t worn one all week.

She wiggles some more but by now the bra has become alive and starts sucking the air out of her lungs. In desperation to get her breath, she pulls her car over into the parking lot of a vacant school building. Driving behind the building she quickly slams the car into park, sending the loose gravel flying.

My sister swiftly rips her bra off and fires it into the back seat, as her fifteen year old daughter’s eyes nearly pop out of her head in disbelief. In the wink of an eye and the squeal of a tire, the car is back on the road, headed toward town.

As they pull into the parking lot at the mall, her daughter nonchalantly remarks, “You should probably take that bra out of the back window, Mom.”

We’ve all had days when we were in our discomfort zone, right?