This week I turned once again
to my book 642 Things to Write About. Today’s prompt: My most embarrassing moment. Oh boy….it’s gonna get real up in here.
Dirt, bugs, backyard forts….these
were the things I loved when I was young.
My penchant for climbing trees, making insects my friends, and building forts
in the woods often tricked people into thinking I was a boy. I was fairly scrawny when I was young, so I
had to wear boys’ jeans throughout elementary school. My hair was kept short. I wore glasses. I was mistaken for a boy by a passenger on an
Amtrak train, a pastor of a church, and a classmate in 1st grade who,
when I came to school wearing a dress, asked if I had run out of boys’ clothes
and had to raid my sister’s closet. I
understand why people got confused. I
was boyish in every way.
I started growing out of the
boy stage by junior high. I wore trendy
girls’ jeans (Seattle Blues, A Smile, and Jordache for you 80’s types), grew my
hair out a bit, and put some flesh on my previously bony body…except for my
chest. When I learned that the most
frightening thing about junior high school would be changing in front of other
girls in P.E. class, I immediately begged for a bra. I just couldn’t be that girl who was still wearing the pull-over training bra or
(Heaven forbid) a simple t-shirt. I
needed a genuine bra, complete with lace, adjustable straps, and a
front-clasp. Thankfully my mom
understood the social anxiety I was under and purchased two legitimate bras for
me, and I didn’t die a horrible death that first day I had to change in front
of my worldly peers in 7th grade P.E. class at Canfield Junior
High.
But let’s be honest: The bra was completely unnecessary. There was no flesh filling it. The straps were doing no work. But my tender 12 year old psyche was saved by
the illusion of a necessary feminine undergarment. In fact, I was lovingly teased by my family
for being a “pirate’s dream” (old sunken chests, har har har), and my sister
gave me “Itty Bitty Booby Pills” for my birthday. As my girlfriends began descending the lingerie
alphabet (into the world of B’s and C’s), I was stuck with A’s (great for my
grades, but bad for my early teenage self-esteem).
I kept thinking that
eventually my body would catch up with my friends’ bodies, but no…to this day I
am a straight-A student (so-to-speak), and I can say I am okay with it. But there was a time when I tried to enhance
what God gave me. I never pulled the old
sitcom trick of stuffing my bra with Kleenex like a young Vicki Stubing did on The Love Boat, but when Victoria’s
Secret came out with the Wonder Bra, I admit that I tried it. And then a new-fangled invention appeared on
the market: The “Chicken Cutlet.”
If you have never seen chicken cutlets, let me describe them for you.
They are often called chicken cutlets because they kind of look like
them. They are flesh colored, usually made of silicone
or some other soft material, and they fit inside the cup of the bra to provide
extra “oomph.” Well, I was given a set
of these cutlets and thought why not give
‘em a whirl? So one day on a whim, I
tucked the rubbery inserts inside my bra and set off for work. I don’t know if they made a noticeable difference
in my appearance…I actually forgot the little guys were in there. I am a teacher, so I spend most of my days on
my feet. I am also rather…flail-y...when
I get caught up in a good book discussion.
So picture this: It is mid-afternoon. I am teaching in my small portable classroom
stuffed with desks and the students in my European Literature class. The class was comprised of only girls, the first
and only time I have ever had the pleasure teaching an all-girl class. We decided to read all the books that boys
would have been unexcited about, and we giddily avoided the “guy books” like 1984, Brave New World, and Heart of Darkness. Instead, we opted for titles with heroines like Emma and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It was Heaven. We talked freely as girls, shared our
feminine tales of woe, and sighed in unison as the credits rolled at the end of
the theatrical version of Pride and
Prejudice (starring Kira Knightly). Well,
I don’t recall which book we were reading or what exactly our conversation was
about, but I can tell you that I was standing in front of the room waving my
arms around about something when the inevitable happened: One singular cutlet broke loose from its prison
of a cottony A cup and simply dropped out of my shirt. That’s right, folks, it was cutlets gone wild
right there in the middle of sophomore English class. Now, the good Lord blessed mankind with the
ability to react instinctually to certain life-threatening events that don’t
even require our brains to be engaged.
Somehow this blessed gift from God kicked in because even as the cutlet
was making its descent from my shirt to the floor my body was kicking into
survival mode. I was never very athletic
(usually near the end of the team selection for kick ball in elementary school,
I confess), but somehow my foot managed to connect with that cutlet with the
kind of skill that would make David Beckham proud, and even before it hit the
classroom floor with a sad little quivering thump I managed to punt the little
sucker behind my desk and out of sight.
To this day I don’t know if
anyone saw the rogue cutlet escape, and somehow I managed to continue teaching
like nothing at all had happened. But
suffice it to say that as soon as class ended I made a swift trip to the ladies’
room to remove his cutlet friend and have never invited them back into my
wardrobe. They still occupy a corner of
a drawer, mainly to give me a good laugh whenever I see them, and to remind me
that the size of one’s bra does not determine one’s character or
happiness.
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