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B.L.T.

A puberty tale

By Eilish TooheyPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 4 min read
Top Story - February 2022
10
B.L.T.
Photo by Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash

To fully understand my plight, you should know that by the seventh grade, my baby sister had breasts that could rival a pornstar's. They grew in less than a week. On Monday, they were little salt piles that she refused to tuck into a training bra, and come Friday, our apartment was echoing with the sound of shower drizzle mixed with screams of, "Where did those come from?" and, "Mom, shut the curtain! Ohmygod—"

I know that I should have been more compassionate towards her. When my body had started changing four year earlier, our mother had told us about her pre-breast reduction surgery days in college, when her boobs were so huge that she walked around hunchbacked. It wasn't fair that a 12-year-old now had to put up with that. But my jealousy outweighed my pity.

I realize how strange that sounds: a teenager jealous of a preteen's rack. My sister certainly didn't appreciate it. "If you want them, take them," she'd snarl. Our mother would try to comfort me, saying I was lucky to have small, perky boobs because I could get away with going braless whenever I wanted. How wrong she was.

You see, my jealousy didn't stem from being tiny-boobed. It stemmed from having B.L.T. — Bigger Left Tit syndrome. For some incomprehensible reason, only half of my chest had developed after puberty punched me in the face. So from the eighth grade until the end of undergrad, I was stuck with a left boob shaped like a traffic cone and a right boob that was little more than a nipple. My sister's breasts may have dragged on the floor, but at least they were even!

I initially thought that my situation was a side effect of having always slept on my right side and that sleeping on my left would give the nub a chance to grow out. When that failed, I tried sleeping on my back, but all that did was create the mental image of my chest as a crashing sales chart. I told myself to ask my family doctor during my checkups if this unevenness was normal. I didn't think it could be, but then, the only other naked breasts I'd seen were on the thousands of Barbies that had been piled in the drawer under my bed until high school. This conversation never ended up happening, however, because while our doctor was incredibly intelligent, he was also a man. The thought of talking to him about my problem made me uncomfortable. Talking to anyone about it did. In fact, I probably would have felt more at ease with my lopsidedness if I could have complained or joked about it with someone. But there is no way to talk about breasts in public without things getting really awkward.

The only plus side to my deformity was that it was easy to hide. Since I was the the only one who knew about it, all I had to do was make sure no one ever saw me topless. Gym class was only mandatory for my first year of high school, and I became quite good at slipping one shirt on over another in the communal changeroom. When I took showers at home, I made sure to redress before leaving the bathroom. And unlike my sister, I made sure to lock the door before turning on the water. As long as kept this up until I could have my own apartment, my shameful secret would never be discovered.

Then high school graduation came along.

Roughly one month before the ceremony, both of my bras were looking threadbare. I dreaded the thought of one of the straps snapping under the black and green dress I'd picked out for the ceremony and somehow causing me to expose myself while crossing the stage to get my diploma, so my mother and I begrudgingly went shopping that weekend, hoping to find something comfortable and cheap. It was in the bright changeroom of the local La Vie En Rose, as I struggled to undo a hideous hot pink bra the saleswoman had forced on me, that my mother (ever the respecter of privacy) pushed back the curtain, stepped in with a handful of other options, and came to a halt once she noticed my boobs in the mirror.

I didn't turn around, worried that doing so would cause me to accidentally flash the rest of the store. Our reflections met each other's eyes, and I could tell that although she was disturbed, she was wracking her brain for a shred of comfort she could spare me, like she had done for all my other imperfections: my wide nose gave my face character, my red hair reflected my fiery personality, my big head held my massive brain. But how do you comfort a 17-year-old with a lopsided chest? What could you possibly say?

She settled on, "Some boy is gonna be really into that," before whisking out of the changeroom, snapping the curtain shut behind her.

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About the Creator

Eilish Toohey

A part-time editor who is trying to get back into the habit of writing.

Reader insights

Nice work

Very well written. Keep up the good work!

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