Mortifying Memories...My First Bra

As most of you know I was an early bloomer, much to my ultimate horror.  In third grade I started "developing".  By fourth grade my mom kept prodding me to look at bras.  My answer to that: heck no!  As far as I knew no one else in my grade was wearing a bra and I'd be darned if I strapped one on for the whole world to gawk at the bra lines on my back.  That summer before fifth grade began Mom put her foot down.  I think it came shortly after we were driving in the car and I raised my arm to point at something from the back seat and in the rear view mirror my mom spied my hairy armpits.  In my mind she slammed on the brakes and said, "Denise, we need to shave your armpits!"  I'm sure it wasn't that dramatic but I was pretty embarrassed by her discovery of my Sasquatch pits.

Mom I'm sure planning out the day as some womanly bonding moment, I was planning on being as obstinate as possible.  On the drive into Logan my mother informed me we'd be picking up my Grandma Margaret because she wanted to be a part of the special day.  I about had a coronary in the backseat.  To be looking at bras at all was bad enough, but now it had turned into some teary-eyed nostalgic adventure with three generations searching for the perfect over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder.  I imagined the worst...we'd be standing in the lingerie department, some employee groping me to find out the perfect size while my grandma and mother loudly reminisced about their first bras...mid grope here comes my elementary school crush...Kevin Benson.  Oh no!  I'd have to duck and run behind that rack of Just My Size bras in those rectangular boxes as if inside you'd find some yummy movie theater candy.

I chose the first bra my mom and grandmother suggested because I just wanted this trip to be over.  To my great relief I saw nobody I knew.  In fact, the rest of the day was spent with my grandma buying me a few things and then we went to Frontier Pies that used to be in the Pinecrest Shopping Center in Logan and Grandma paid for lunch and even let me get a banana cream pie...my favorite.  I look back now and wish I had been a bit more relaxed.

My Grandma Margaret has since passed away and I miss her terribly.  I miss her giggle.  I miss visiting her on Sundays.  In the winter we'd sit on the warm radiators in her kitchen and read Star Magazine.  In the summer time we'd be welcome to get ourselves a cold Coke out of the fridge and often times would walk up to Mack Park.  I even miss her sternness when we'd put a toe out of line, like when she'd find the dark cookie halves from Oreos that I had licked clean in the garbage.  She must have found this terribly wasteful.

That bra was the first of many.  There's no holding back the onset of one's well-endowed genetics.  Fifth grade was only the beginning.  In middle school I'd endure boys making comments about my chest, as if just because they were obvious it was okay for them to talk about them.  In seventh grade someone told me that they had heard a rumor that I'd been born with boobs.  Which is so laughable now but back then I was super embarrassed that people would believe it.  I could envision myself on the cover of The Weekly World News, you know the one with every other week having a story about a bat boy with huge ears and sharp teeth, only this time it would be a baby in a onesie with a Dolly Parton chest, the headline proclaiming The Boob Child of Clarkston.  Oh the wonder years...I'm so glad they're over.