Fitting In is All Up to You (2010)

The muffin top has established itself as Emergency Room couture. Some clerks in NYC love, love, love the muffin top.

According to Wikipedia: A "Muffin-top" is a slang term used to describe the phenomenon of overhanging flesh when it spills over the waistline of pants or skirt in a manner that resembles the top of a muffin spilling over its paper casing.

I was woefully ignorant of this fashion statement when I asked the meanest clerk of all, "My dear, when is the baby due?"

"Tell me, you did not just say that!" I quickly realized that I had entered into uncharted territory. "Oh no he did-ent," her tone increasing in strength.

It was at that moment that I understood that all the leggings I saw meticulously tucked into boots (without the pants) were meant to be fashionable. The elegance of the Bronx and the crown jewel of Brooklyn personified.

My friend Christmas Madamba, a new and exuberant RN, came to save me from the army of wigs that started to confront me. Clerks had begun to encircle me.

"Come here and let me show you my new black dress from Marshall's," said Christmas. She then tried on her dress in the back of the trauma room and when she came out, I stood in shock.

"What size is that?" the words seemed to spill out of me.

"It's a size 10," she giggled as she spun around.

"But you're a size 16?" I answered, while emptying a disposable urinal into the sink.

"I know, isn't it fabulous?"

Christmas was a free spirit, but highly inappropriate. (She once asked another RN, "Auntie Mae, have you ever had cunnilingus?" Poor Mae, she dashed out of the station almost choking on her Dunkin Donut.)

As Christmas Madamba stood there smiling at me in her stretch-limo jersey knit, it dawned on me...I don't think I fit in here.

Christmas was about to change back into her scrubs when she proceeded to tell me about the massage she received from a man with a pony tail.

"He reached in under my panties to massage my buttocks."

"Under your size 16 Lane Bryant's?" I asked.

"No, silly. My size 8 JC Penney's!"

And with that she skipped away without a plus-sized care in the world.

It was then when I learned a truly valuable lesson: sometimes in order to fit in, you actually have to make things fit you.