I'm Just a Straight-A Gal

I've figured out the source of my pessimism. My breasts. Well, my non-breasts.

(By the way, I hate the word "breasts." And now I'm going to write a post in which I say it repeatedly. Great. Just great.)

Anyway. As a young girl, I was never hideous, per say, but I wasn't the cutest chick in the class. So hard to imagine, I know, given my timeless beauty as an adult, but try to suspend reality for a minute here. Right before I entered fourth grade, at a new school, I'd had 17 teeth pulled, because, if I hadn't I would have had three rows of teeth, and would have looked somewhat shark-like I imagine, which meant that I had one molar in each of the back corners of my mouth and eight front teeth, four top, four bottom. Hot. I also had a half-grown-out perm, which made my head look like one of those gradated pyramids. My clothes were from stores like Ross and TJMaxx, which mimicked the current fashions but not enough to pass me off as cool in any way. In short, my general appearance was not a good look.

Then, in fifth grade, we had the sex talk at school. We were given a little pamphlet about a girl named Karen. Karen was super-cool because she was already in middle school and got her period. And, she had breasts.

I was convinced that having breasts would change my life. No longer would I be skinny and awkward, shaped like a hot dog, straight up and down. I would be curvy, womanly, sexy. This was not an option. I was a girl and therefore I would grow breasts at some point before I entered high school. Karen did. The pamphlet told me so.

For the next two years I waited for my breasts to grow. I wasn't worried. This was nature. And nature don't lie. I watched for changes in the other girls in my class, not in a creepy way, noticing as their t-shirts expanded. When this happened, these girls seemed to smile more, be more confident--at least that was my impression. Soon, every problem I had was solved in my mind with, "Well, when I get breasts, this won't even matter."

Yet, these promised breasts never came.

Soon eighth grade graduation approached and all of my close friends got their periods. And breasts. But not me. Then, my first period hit, on a class trip to Washington D.C., which was great because everyone found out. But this time, I couldn't console myself with puberty's promise.

Karen lied to me. Puberty, and nature, deserted me. And thus, my pessimism, my skepticism, about people or things coming through for me, emerged. If you can't count on a given, what can you count on?

Now, at 25, I'm rocking the same barely-A's that kinda-sorta-emerged in high school. Of course, I've been consoled by past boyfriends who didn't care about my straight-A status, orating to me the adage that "a handful is all you need." Sure, it helps that my ass is amazing (nope, not even going to apologize for my egotism because it's the truth). But every time I see what one would call a rack, or hooters, or tits, or some other derogatory-sounding name delineating big breasts, mine seem even smaller by comparison.

While mine get to a full-A once a month, so I can sort-of know what's it's like to actually have breasts, I feel obligated to compensate by staying in shape, having a pretty good face, and utilizing my stellar, usually self-deprecating wit. But I always feel like I'm missing something. I feel more consistently like a 12-year-old boy than a 20-something woman.

So, I thought I would take the opportunity to say, thanks, nature, for making me a pessimist. You're a lying bastard.