Totally About Underwear

So I don't know if this is just a me thing but I get uncomfortable every time I go to buy underwear. It's nothing super specific, I just don't like being around the underwear in general. I keep thinking all the women there will know I like girls and think I am a perv. If I hold them too long or go past the rows of leggings with all the pictures of women’s legs I think all these people hiding behind the displays and just beyond my peripheral vision are staring at me. My imaginary audience is an unrelenting bitch. I of course know all of this makes no sense but since when did the anxious mind ever make anything productive much less sensible?
But of course I have a childhood story to slightly back up my weariness of panties in public. It's nothing sensational so I hope that first sentence didn't get your hopes up. Ahem. Cue black and white imagery. I am in middle school. It was the first time I ever went bra shopping or at least the first(and last) I did so in a store. My mother took me to a department store's female section and proceeded to pick out a few bras around my size. I went to try said bras on. I wanted to wear bras because that is what all girls my age should be doing (I mean come on a friend of mine had worn them since fourth grade, I was way over due) and at the same time hated it. Bras were hard to put on, unnaturally so for myself I think, and to me(at the time probably an A cup) essentially pointless. But they were sexy! Or were suppose to be. If I even wanted that. Which I kinda didn't. Anyway, I am trying them on and of course having a hard time. My mother asks if they fit and I am sure I mumbled a completely unintelligible answer. The whole affair was embarrassing. I am sure I was blushing even before my mother brought a clerk over and told me to step out and show her how it fit. Maybe the clerk asked me to step out, I am not sure but the voice of authority compelled me and who was I to say no? I was in my preteens and as most girls at that age are I was extremely self-conscious. Perhaps more so than normal(or so it felt). I did not want to step out of that dressing room. I wanted combat boots. I wanted a tux. I wanted to dress like a man. But I wanted to fit in most of all. So thus I wanted a plethora of things I didn't really want(like bras and short shorts and big boobs and a giggle to make all the boys go crazy) but thought I should want. All that floated away as I stepped out of the dressing room. I was in a bra about to show a complete stranger my breasts(more or less) and I wanted increasingly by every moment I was exposed, to die. I stood there and she said some things to my mother and we left shortly after. And I have never tried on bras or for that matter shopped for them in a store again. I don't blame my mother or the store clerk or the creators of such complicated things as hooks and straps but instead blame my own reluctance to face anything that could potentially be embarrassing and for me that category is rather substantial. I also blame society for telling me what I want not asking me and myself for(semi understandably given my age) not knowing the difference. I also blame the people who created rotating doors because I think they are both fun and creepy.
Due to my reluctance I start small. Underwear.
After meandering around the underwear section(probably more suspicious than just going in there outright) I ran in and grabbed as fast as I could the raciest pair of panties I have ever owned. My underwear used to fall into the realm of granny panties but when I started dating Bree they moved up to plain and functional and sometimes I even get the guts to move beyond this comfortable level to that of scandalous panties(a more correct term could be: panties in a color other than gray or panties with *gasp* a pattern or if I am feeling really crazy: panties with a bow or lace or other such additions). Being an average(I dare not say normal) young woman I have the expectation I should be able to buy all the damn underwear I want and not give a shit about what other people are(though it is probably more often not) thinking of me. So on top of feeling anxious over the whole thing I then feel strange for feeling that in the first place. I start pacing. Then I get more nervous because and obviously nervous girl in the underwear section must stand out and if there is anything I don't want to do it's stand out. Right? Finally I feel I have maxed out my ability for weirdness and instead move into the comfortable feeling of flight and rush off to check out. Having worked up the guts to purchase my panties I went to the cashier with the longest line because it was the only cashier who happened to be a woman. Sexist? Maybe but I felt she would understand better or know what I was going through or that is all bullshit and I just felt more comfortable without a man touching my underwear, whether on or off me and whether washed later or not. I also bought gum and a glasses fixing kit to balance out the degree of normalcy my items would appear to have. This is something I sometimes do when alone. As if the cashier rates me based on the things I buy. But maybe people do that when they buy condoms? I wouldn't know. I am sure the cashier didn't care but nonetheless I made it out the store and into my car with the least amount of anxious twittering I had ever mustered on such an occasion. Hurray for me.
Operation Pretty Panties: Achieved.