I grew up in a rural suburb of Kansas City, a place where a car is the only means of freedom. There was no grocery store, movie theater, ice cream shop or hangout I could walk to. I walked outside the front of my house and saw cows; if I walked out the backdoor, I saw woods and occasionally, my dad in his underwear. It took me five minutes to walk from my house to the end of the driveway to catch the school bus in the morning. I could run it in three, but I tried not to. The reason? My mother could never acknowledge that by the fifth grade, my breasts were larger than hers. Therefore, she never bought me a bra that fit.
On the days I made a mad rush down the 2 1/2 acre front yard to catch the already waiting busーmy boobs bopped, flopped, and damn near slapped me in the face. Trying to dodge my boobs, I looked up and saw kids hanging out the bus windows, laughing and juggling invisible balls in front of their chests.
As I crawled up the bus steps out of breath, the large, red headed, heavy smoker-bus driver looked down at me. Wiping her mascara ruining tears away, she struggled for enough air between cackles to wheeze, "Damn Girl!" closing the door behind me.
Nobody knows where my boobs came from. They are not from my mother or father. I believe they are a gift from God. Only he would know how much I'd fall flat on my face and how much I needed the extra couple of inches of cushion to keep me from breaking my nose. Plus, I they provided a place to put my keys, wallet, ID, homework, lunch...
When I was twelve, my mother told me I should have a breast reduction, and while we're at it, a nose and eye job. At the time I thought, " If I get a breast reduction, I'll eventually break my nose as it will now bust on the pavement. The nose job will have to come sooner or later, Mom's just thinking ahead...but I never thought I'd damage my eyes in a fall." I watched a news program about plastic surgery and was horrified. I wasn't going to let strange fully-clothed men draw all over on my naked body with a blue marker. The surgery never happened for me.
Needless to say, my mother was addicted to plastic surgery and endless beauty regimes. I watched her go through a facelift and a nose job. For two weeks she slept sitting up in bed, her entire head and face wrapped in white cloth. She looked like the Elephant Man.
Yet, it never occurred to her that eating well, getting 8 hours sleep, abstaining from several glasses of alcohol and pots of coffee every day might make her beautiful. (To be fair... does that occur to anyone?)
When I was eleven, she pointed out to me that my "boobs were already droopy". In my mother's eyes, my boobs were not "big" but "old". From the age of eleven to twenty-five, I believed her. I thought I had " Granny Boobs". I also believed it was my fault. "I should have never ran so fast down the yard to catch the bus, I've ruined the elastic in my boobs already..." I thought.
When I was twenty-five, I performed at the Melbourne comedy festival In Australia. There I saw a novelty t-shirt in a tourist gift shop that had, "Tits around the World" written above various cartoonish representations of boobage.
From that shirt I learned that I did not have "Granny Boobs" at all. As a matter of fact, what I had was found under the category " Porn Star Boobs".
It was like the ugly duckling discovering she'd turned into, not a swan, but a stallion. I walked out of the store a little taller, though it did hurt my back a bit.