Okay, so this is totally off the beaten path. No medical angle. No talking about Dr. Jack Merchant. I have been watching “Leanne” on Netflix. If you haven’t discovered Leanne Morgan, go to Netflix or Youtube and watch some of her comedy specials BEFORE you watch the new series. And try, for now, to avoid the little baby girl overlays of her comedy. You’ll see what I mean. You must see Leanne’s facial expressions to get her comedy.

Then, go to Netflix and watch the new series. Bring a tissue. You’ll be crying with laughter. Leanne Morgan is from Tennessee and her southern accent is genuine and, for this southern boy, strangely comforting. It brings back many memories of growing up on a farm in Blanchard, Louisiana. She is my people!

You can also find many video posts on Youtube with Leanne interviewed by famous people such as Oprah about her series. But the best is with Amy Poehler. During that interview, Leanne talks about her battle with Spanx and girdles and after I got myself up off the floor, a memory from my childhood surfaced.

That’s my mother on the far right at Grand Canyon when I was ten. I’m the kid looking away from the camera. The other two kids are my nephews and my older sister, Gwen, is their mother. The guy in the middle is my father, of course.

My mother was larger than life. Literally. Her entire life, she fought the battle of the bulge. Once, and only once, successfully losing a hundred pounds. She had TOPS to thank. What is TOPS? Take Off Pounds Sensibly! Maybe a Weight Watchers precursor? Guess what? It still exists.

I tell the story of the time I bit into a salad mother made from a TOPS recipe only to find plastic netting in my mouth. Green plastic netting! The recipe said to substitute it for real lettuce to cut down on the calories. And to put fiber in your diet! I think I pooped a flower arrangement!

Tab was the drink of choice back then filled with that mouse bladder cancer agent saccharin. I drank it just like my Mom because I was a hefty, chunky little boy who had to wear “Husky” jeans. A nice word for fat boy breeches. And don’t get me started on Metrical. Those little dry, flaky biscuits could have been used for door stops. And stop me up they did! Anyway, I digress.

But, the battle of bulge reached critical proportions every Sunday morning. My father was a bivocational music director and he served in various small churches my entire life. This meant we were at the church every time the doors were open. Now, my mother drove a school bus. And her preferred clothing was double knit polyester pants and flowered blouses. She made both, by the way, from that lovely, indestructible polyester cloth that will be wrapped around indestructible styrofoam in a landfill. A thousand years from now someone will find that blouse and pair of pants and wear them with a Styrofoam cooler for a hat.
For a short period of time, she made me shirts to wear to junior high school. I tried to burn them in the trash, but as I said, they were indestructible!

On Sunday mornings, when I was young, between about 6 and 10, my mother would call me into her bedroom as she was getting dressed for Sunday morning. She agreed to wear a dress on Sunday morning instead of her slacks because, after all, she was the music director’s wife. She won a battle once to allow her to wear her pants on Sunday evening, but that is a story for another day.

My mother would be standing by the bed with her girdle halfway up her legs. My job was to climb up on the bed and grab the top of her girdle and pull with all my might. My father couldn’t do the job. His hands were too big to fit between the girdle’s lip and my mother’s, uh, skin.

I would heave an ho and pull and tug and grunt and sweat until finally, the girdle would slide up into place and my mother, red faced and short of breath would declare victory. I never thought about this odd request. Didn’t all boys help their mothers with their girdles? Of course they did.
Until I heard Leanne Morgan talk about her girdle and her struggle to get it up over her stomach “the size of a small purse”.

I laugh about this today. I never shared that girdle gridiron touchdown story with anyone until I got married. My wife never wore a girdle. In fact, the word girdle has all but disappeared from our vocabulary replaced with more acceptable euphemisms.

My mother passed away in 2004. And I miss her. But I must admit, I don’t miss the great girdle hitch me up!
Check out Leanne on Netflix and laugh. Now, when she mentions her girdle, you’l see why I found myself on the floor in tears!