By Gazonga Gal

Last Sunday, I was talking with my pop, getting the weekly update on the West Coast branch of the family (Dad, his wife, and my twin half-sisters who are 10), when he opined that one of the girls was already in a training bra. It was more of a “Where does the time go?” than a “WTF?” but it just goes to show that, for better or worse, Dad’s day-to-day involvement in the rearing of his second family is a lot more intensive than back in the bad old days when I was growing up.

I seriously doubt I ever consulted my father on the subject of breasts. In fact I am sure of it. Nope, Mom, with her perfect 36Cs was my go-to source on that one. (Actually when we lived in Chicago, the art director of then nascent Playboy approached her to enquire if she would model for them. She was flattered, but declined.) And even she was a bit stymied by my development… or should I say, lack thereof.

As I’ve mentioned before, big boobs run rampant on both sides of our genetic stadium. The Stitzburg Tits had nothing on the Galatzer Gazongas; it was a regular sweatermeat bonanza all around. The only mildly less than zaftig woman in the family tree was my maternal grandmother, who, at five-foot-six, with dark brown eyes, jet-black hair, olive skin and—I am guessing here—a nice pair of 36Bs, was something of a changeling, anyhow. So it seemed kind of odd that as other girls my age began to sprout and bloom that my garden of chestly delights lay fallow and barren.

I am going to officially date myself now by revealing that my nickname in junior high school was “Flatsy.”

A brief history lesson: Flatsies were tragically feminine in an oh-so-cutesy way, bendable action figures popular back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. (Picture the ill-starred, born-again love children that might have resulted from a drunken gangbang between the Bratz dolls and Gumby.) To my everlasting horror and abashment, the tagline to the Flatsies’ commercial jingle ran: “Flatsies! Flatsies! They’re flat, and that’s that!” I confess, I lost count of just how many times the pubescing boys in my class chanted those words at me as I braved the gauntlet of their callow disdain.

Oh, the irony. From barely a bee sting to triple DDDigits!

Of course, it would have been a lot easier to walk defiant among my peers and toss off a hearty, “Ha-ha! So there, you fathead lummoxes! See what God hath wrought!” had my boobs busted a simultaneous move and arrived at the finish line in a dead heat, but Mother Nature decided to have one more laugh at my expense before gifting me with her bounty. I didn’t develop breasts so much as I developed “breast.” (It’s hard to “Ha-ha!” when you only have one “ha” to ha with.) I later learned that unequal rates in breast development are not at all abnormal, but at the time, I remember thinking, Lord help me…Frankentit!

I was so deeply traumatized by what I considered to be my sideshow freakishness, I couldn’t even bring myself to talk to my mom about it. When Mutt sheepishly arrived some months later (Yes, they are named Mutt & Jeff, but that topic, “A Boob by Any Other Name,” is one I am sure to tackle in the near future), I heaved an epic sigh of relief. It took almost a year to for my breasts to achieve parity, but eventually, things pretty much evened out. As is the case with most women, one is still slightly larger than the other, but at this point, I defy the casual observer to tell which one is Mutt and which is Jeff. (And no, you may not heft them in your hot little hands for the sake of comparison.)

One thing I do recall is that when my pair finally became apparent, my life was forever changed. I was no longer seen as “the smart girl” or the “girl with a good pitching arm,” I became the chick with the tits.

It hardly seemed fair. I had done nothing to achieve my newfound status, but I soon realized that the power of the boob is a mighty and often mesmerizing thing. Learning to harness that force for the power of good took some time, however. You wouldn’t hand a teenager the keys to a nuclear submarine and expect them to know how to maneuver it, would you?

I am guilty of launching a few torpedoes at unintentional targets in the beginning, but I did get the hang of it—according to my own code of breast ethics, that is. Was I above taking a better grade from a college professor with a penchant for cleavage? Not if he wasn’t above giving me one. I was still the smart girl and the girl with the good pitching arm. I was also the girl with the big tits. If the latter is all someone chose to see, I felt not a whit of guilt when I sank his battleship. Would you?