See also "Barbi made to bend over" which describes the events that made me tell this tale.
Some men stare at my breasts but men do not have to carry them day in day out. These men make me feel ashamed of my body and my breasts make me feel tired, especially at night simply because they have become so heavy.
I always wanted to be like other girls but my mother told me that 'other girls' are all special in their own ways and it was high time I was taught to walk properly. She said she should have enrolled me at ballet classes when I was a toddler but now I would make up. This was just after she bought me my first bra. Nobody else wore a real one at that stage. I kept looking round and feeling out of place.
However, the ballet teacher said she was pleased to meet me and asked if I liked music. I could see she wanted me to like music so I expect I said I did. Provided she did not ask me to describe it by classification I should be fine. It was unlikely she could understand the difference between garage and grunge, far less likely than between blues and country. She didn't ask me about my favorite group, which told me she wasn't interested in me. So much for this teacher!
Then she played a piece of music and said she wanted to watch how I breathed. I knew there was something familiar about it, but I was impatient and something was making me angry. So angry I started stamping one of my feet before I realised it was picking up the beat of the music.
"Walk with me," she told me and set off down the corridor. Every second time I put down my right foot I was stomping on it.
Yet she seemed happy enough and even explained that the music had been adjusted to play fast so I suppose it was coming off a media player. The tune was familiar to me because it was "The Impossible Dream" in an instrumental version only. She had speeded it up to suit a child's faster breaths and shorter legs, she said. Then she got to the meat.
"You moved to the music you heard. You are going to learn to move very well to many types of music. You will leave this school moving to the music you can make in your own head."
So much was OK. Then she jumped in, both feet, "You came here an ugly duckling and you will leave gracefully like a swan."
I left right there and then. I stood as high as I could on my toes, reached high up into the air just as the dancers did on television shows, turned round and walked out the door. Then I ran down the stairs screaming at being insulted and didn't stop until I got to my mother where she was waiting in the coffee bar.
I probably told her that I would never go back. Never ever! I certainly remember raging at my mistreatment while my mother held me in her arms.
Somehow or other she talked me round into going back. She changed and it was for the best really, maybe. I also got an introduction to classical music through her class and discovered it was not only about dead white men from Europe.
There is this tune which I thought was supposed to be some woman unravelling a wool cardigan. But it sounded much like "The Impossible Dream" all over again and perhaps that was why I remembered it so well when I met Brad later on. You might have worked out by now what it is but I will come to that later.
That was much later so I will concentrate on the present, when I actually was learning to walk more gracefully and more importantly I would always say, to let people know that I would go where I said I was going to go.
That certainty helped me when I was helping Mom by getting my two little brothers to behave better.
The watchwords here are Confidence, Communication, Self Determination and Achievement. Self Determination does not go first because you must first of all let everyone else know you are in charge. Certainly not that you plan to be. It worked from Senior School onwards and as my breasts grew and I felt out of shape I continued to hold my head high. You can follow!
This does not mean that I often feel a freak and I know the boys started calling me Barbi but I refuse to believe that my feelings and their callings are related. They can believe it if they want. The problem lies in their heads and not in mine. End of story!
My mother was my best friend. She is wonderfully practical and just keeps on moving, working, usually while she is talking and I have realised now that she actually is listening while you are talking.
Now I am a married woman myself I have worked out that she probably gets it from my dad just when ever she wants it.
Now my dad is a lovely big man, sexy too in his own way. When AOL started giving out e-mail addresses he managed to get one for my mother, mygreatyoni.
A big brute of a man to be a comms worker, but there you are. One evening we were sitting on our soft chairs watching a basketball game on TV but this evening he smelled of beer and strawberries from the freezer. By and by he was paying less attention to the game and looking more at me.
There even seemed to be a curvature in his spine leaning towards me. I started wondering if he was thinking the same thing as me: had my breasts finally stopped growing because I wasn't growing much taller any longer.
Had it been my mother I would probably have asked her if that was what she was thinking. But my dad, lovely man that he is, well maybe it's only because he is a man, I did not feel it was quite right.
Nevertheless I blurted out something to him. In half a minute mom had put down her ironing in the room next to the kitchen and walked through. My dad was gradually straightening up when she walked up right between our seats from behind us.
With one hand she gave me a folded scrap of paper and put her other hand on the back of my dad's neck. That didn't stop her movements. She just kept on going, slid her arm down his back, swung her legs off the floor and lowered herself onto his lap.
Over her shoulder she called out to me, "Tough about the game but Aunt Betty wants you to get the things on that list as fast as possible. You can see the end of the game there if you hurry."
I unfolded the paper and looked at the list. There were only two things on this urgent list. 'OUT NOW' scribbled with a pencil which had broken when she started writing.
Even before I left the room I could hear the horrible sound of my mother, my best friend, purring against my father's chest. Aunt Betty let me sleep over.
It was OK I thought then that she and a man might make love together, she was an aunt, even if she was well over thirty and definitely middle aged.. But my own parents! Ugh, Ugh.
School never had prepared me for this.
By the time to chose where I should major my interests were dance, literature and debate. You don't need to guess how well I write but if you talk to me, just remember this:
