Surprise!

This is the continuation of a discussion over at Phantom Scribbler's:

When I was ten years old, I was a short kinda skinny kid. Clumsy, too. Skinned knees, the works. Would have been a tom-boy if I had any coordination whatsoever, or if I hadn't preferred to sit on the bleachers and read.

Anyways, one fine June morning when I was ten, I woke up and I got dressed and I went downstairs and my mom (to the best of my memory, I think it was my mom.) says, "We need to get your stuff ready for camp, so let's go shopping and..." (looking me over) "....hmmmm, maybe we should buy you a training bra."

Okay, no problem. A training bra. We got the cutest little pink-and-white striped Sassoon number (wait, which was the brand with the fingers making an "okay" symbol, Sassoon or Jordache? I think it was Sassoon.) And shorts and t-shirts and sweat-shirts and new sandals.

So I go to summer camp. And over the summer that cute little pink-and-white number gets smaller and smaller.

Anyways...I come back from summer camp and my mom hugs me and looks me over and says "We need to get your stuff ready for school and...hmmmm...looks like we need to get you a bigger bra."

C cup.

I went from nothing to C cup in 10 weeks. At age ten.

And all my life since then, if I gain any weight it goes there first and doesn't go away. I'm now almost to the point where JC Penney won't cut it as a supplier. I'm not quite there, but it's a close run thing.

Up until I quit the bookstore, I was 98 pounds (soaking wet, with long hair). HUGE breasts on a teeny-tiny body. Now, it's not so...obviously off the scale. But still....

Mr. Spock marvels at how comfortable I feel about my body and in particular, the somewhat alien creatures that have taken up residence up front. I think I can explain it thusly:

Everyone has one Biggest Physical Problem. For some, it's their weight; for others, some facial feature that they are unhappy with; or perhaps some actual illness or physical handicap.

For me, that Biggest Physical Problem has always been my height. Kids in my grade school called me a "personal leaning post" and rested their elbows on my head. You know the type of thing. I firmly believe that you cannot have two Biggest Physical Problems. So, my breasts are a HUGE part of me, but they aren't perceived by me as a problem. They might have been if I were 5'3", but I'm 4'11". I can't buy even petite clothes without having to hem them. I can't reach the pedals on most cars without having to turn off the airbag 'cause I'm so close to the steering wheel (Yay for the Kia Sedona! A car that fits both me and my husband!). I constantly have to ask for help getting things down from the shelves in grocery stores. I have trouble getting Muffin Man in and out of shopping carts.

You get the picture. So while I'm occasionally irritated by my breasts, mostly I find them amusing. And that's the way it will probably stay until I can no longer shop for them conveniently. At that point, they may very well become my one Biggest Physical Problem.

But I doubt it.