TRAINING BRAS

Have you ever wondered just what training bras are all about? I guess they're now called sports bras, which work just fine for me. Were training bras called that because it was supposed to train them to grow? If so, it was a hoax. I never figured out why they were called 'training.'

I was reminded several months ago of a few issues that took me back so many years ago, I don't want to say.

I've been meeting with several girls from the class '65 every month to have lunch, and we are all 'Tooners (we all ended up back in Mattoon IL, our hometown) though some of the old classmates meet with us when they're here in Mattoon.

So we were stuffed into a booth, and Karen leaned over and said, "Where are your boobs?" Me: "I don't have any." And I never did. We were at a slumber party one night in those days, and we named our boobs. Yes, we really did. There was Wolf Head, Boobs Mallory, Fried Eggs, Lemon Drops, Grapefruit---you get the picture.

But onto the distant past.

My little brother was very sick in Southern TX (asthma from the climate there) so my family pulled up stakes, sold the house and business in McAllen TX and headed for Southern CA. We had close relatives and old friends there. My dad looked for work while we lived there, renting a wonderful daylight basement apartment from a retired dentist from Mattoon, the older Dr. Baughman and wife Edna, who moved to Carlsbad to retire and had always been childless. They were thrilled to have two kids living downstairs, and they were so enthralled with me and my brother. My sister was in the womb. When I walked out our door, up a few steps were the doctor's tomato plants, roses and several veggies. He and I used to pick and eat juicy tomatoes right off the vine, and he would just laugh delightedly at our messes. If I passed his little garden and walk a few steps to the street (the house was on a corner) and look down the street, there was the ocean. They built Carlsbad homes upward away from the ocean. It was the neatest place ever, and our TV was in storage, so I read lots of Nancy Drew Mysteries, but there was no end to what kept me occupied, and I LOVED our apartment---so cozy and homey. Though smallish for a family, I adored living there, but we all had our own space. Scott and I were bussed to Oceanside CA to school, and those schools were sadly lacking compared to TX's new and progressive schools. I hated the school and my teacher, and it stunk something terrible. I still smell it, something I never forgot. I described the smell to my mom as "rotten candy." In reality, it was a very old, sweet smell. I used to hold my nose in class to block it out. She used to call on me when she saw me holding my nose, and I just sat there like I was deaf and mute. I hated that horrible woman.

CA was overrun by the influx of people moving for the climate and its beauty. My dad had looked for work, but jobs were so scarce, he couldn't find anything that paid enough to support a growing family, so after talking to the Baughmans and giving them a check for the time spent there (they would never accept rent on a monthly basis), and it was with great sadness for them and us, we packed up and headed out of CA., not knowing where we were bound. BTW, the Baughman's never would cash the check.

We got to a point of no return, and my dad had talked to his folks who had told him they wanted him back to run Knowles Cafeteria, as my granddad wanted to retire. My dad pulled off the road crying, bawling, turning around to Scott and me (we had the station wagon's back seat down and a mattress covering the back for us kids) and asking through the tears if we wanted to go back or go home to IL. I was crying by then, and Scott and I said in unison, "Go home!" He drove back onto the road, and we were IL bound in no time.

I had been talking to my mom and dad during the ride from TX to CA by leaning my chest on the back of the front seat. However, on the way to IL, I started to do that and it was a shock to find that my chest hurt. I recoiled that first time, and my mom happened to see it. "Did that hurt?" Me, being puzzled, said "Yeah!" Mama said, "You're developing." My thought at the time, "Developing what?" It only took a few seconds to connect, and my exact thought, "Ohhh, UGH!" I had just spent years chasing snakes, toads, lizards, etc. and riding horses and my burro, both bareback. It was only sissies who rode on saddles, and we forged into undeveloped areas we called wildernesses, cutting down anything in our way, making paths to absolutely nothing. We'd show up at home when we were thirsty enough to drink tadpole infested muddy water in the irrigation canals or so hungry our collection of scary critters in our bucket or box were looking good enough to eat. Looking back, we were tough little girls, afraid of nothing. I had to be broken in though. Coming down to the Rio Grande Valley, 6 miles to the Mexico border was no match for a Gringo from IL. I quickly found two neighboring friends, raised right there, who conquered my fears by taking me to a stop sign where 2 little Mexican boys had killed a huge rattler by throwing rocks till it croaked. Then, they stood on a car and pulled the rattler up to the top of the sign, fastened it there and let the length of the snake hang down. It was so long, the end was on the ground---maybe a couple of feet, and it was fat and ugly. I decided right then I had to get tough, but you know.... it was so much fun! We even picked cotton in a big field across the street from my two girlfriends (I lived across the alley from them). I didn't even know what it was we were picking till they laughed and said, "It's cotton!" Wow... I didn't know how far I'd come till my dad discovered a huge fire ant hill almost in our backyard, but just outside on the side of the alley. Every time I walked by it, I'd destroy the top of their hill by kicking it good, and they would get busy and build it up again, only to have me come by and destroy it again and again. Those fire ants were nasty, and these were huge and very red. I once stood straddled over it and poured water into the hole at the top of their hill. I would she those things scattering and dip my foot down into the mass of ants and stir them around with pure meanness, stomping on them as I went. I'd never read any horror books a that tender age, so them attacking me was never a thought. It would have been a Stephen King classic, though he wasn't even writing yet. I think that poor old fart is about my age. So this little rough and tumble brown-skinned girl with a TX accent was told 'she was developing.' She was in awe on one hand, but crushed on the other hand because it meant that going back to a developed, civilized and boring way of living meant she would be forced to grow up, and she wasn't so sure she was ready for that.

Triple humiliation started when I was 11, soon after the "sore" incident. My mom took me to Young's Department Store. She hadn't told me a sales lady would come in and measure me for a good fit. OMG! It was a horrible experience! I was so mad at my mom, but she acted like she didn't know that would happen. Later, my family were playing badminton in our backyard. My mom said, "Dwain, Nancy is wearing her new training bra." Horrors. It was worse than the woman "fitting" me.

Since I didn't train them to grow, I kept on wearing training bras. The last horrifying incident was when I was 15 and went to a huge slumber party at a classmate's house. It was where someone taught me that if you didn't inhale, you weren't really smoking. I inhaled, and it nearly killed me. I thought I would pass out, but I tried like hell not to show it. When my dad picked up several of us, he said we smelled like smoke. I told him Judy's dad was a smoker. He didn't buy it but laughed anyway.

There were some boys outside who had heard about the party, so we went outside to see who all was there. Somehow, a few of the boys got inside the house while we were occupied. They got into our underwear and helped themselves. Yes, they got my training bra, old and stretched out, all 34 AA of it. Later, when inside, we discovered the mess they had made of our things. One of the girls looked out and saw all that underwear hanging from the tower TV antenna (the kind you could easily climb). I tried to be calm when we all went out and held a flashlight up to see if ours was there. Horrors. There was my training bra flapping at the top. I tried to be nonchalant as one of the girls went up grabbing and throwing down the underwear for all to pick up. I never even let on and ignored my bra while I thought ahead to the next day when I would have to leave with no bra. Little did I know I needn't have worried.

I went home dressed without a bra and no one could even tell. Humiliating. I told my mom I wanted to get rid of the old training bras and get one with a little padding, so she took me to Young's again; I told her I didn't want a fitter in my dressing room---I'd fit myself nicely without help, so I did.

Can you guess what happened with the padded bra? Nothing, absolutely nothing. No one, including me, could ever see a difference.