Growing up is hard to do, especially when life starts you down a completely different path...

"This is not happening to me," I told myself again, staring at my reflection in the full-length bathroom mirror. "I am not growing tits!" I didn’t say it out loud though because someone might hear.

They certainly looked like tits. Small, pointy, with nipples about the size of a Hershey's Kiss sitting on an miniature cupcake. Two of them, one each side. I poked one. "Ouch," I said.

My younger sister Donna tapped at the door. "Hurry up!" she said urgently but only loud enough for me to hear. "I swear, you take longer in the bathroom than anyone."

“Shut up,” I said. “Go away,” I added when Donna rattled the door knob.

“I’ve got to get ready, too!” Donna complained.

I pretended to ignore her. My hands shook as I tried to wrap an elastic bandage around my chest. It didn’t cooperate, I couldn’t get it tight enough to stay in place as I brought the second layer around. Frustrated I left off the attempt and struggled with an urge to start crying. I had to do something, I couldn’t go to school with nipples showing through my shirt.

“Mom!” In the hallway my sister appealed to a higher authority. “Jon is going to make me late for school, hogging the bathroom!”

“You can use mine,” our mother called, probably from the kitchen.

“But my stuff is in there!” Donna protested.

And it was, some of her pink babydoll t-shirts hung from the shower rail. I seized one of them, maybe it would fit tight enough that under one of my own t-shirts and a regular shirt….

Only fifteen months younger than me, Donna was not actually smaller as the growth spurt I had been waiting for had yet to arrive, so the shirt was not as tight as I had hoped. Still, with two more layers, it did a lot to conceal the unwanted growths on my chest.

I glared at my reflection. Shaggy white-blond hair, slightly unfocussed blue-gray eyes (I didn’t have my glasses on), clear and fair complexion (I tended to burn instead of tanning), tip-tilted nose and a wide mouth with full lips gave me less of a masculine face than I would have preferred.

“What am I going to do?” I wondered. School had started up again at the beginning of the week, my sophomore year in high school and how would I ever get through gym class once they started insisting students change clothes in the locker room?

I would just get killed if I had to do that. Or die of embarrassment. I imagined my face bursting into flames that would cook my brain and put me out of my misery.

Donna screeched outside the door again and this time I flinched. After one last look in the mirror, I reached out and opened it, brushing past her with only a mumbled, “Sorry.”

“Grr!” said Donna.

*

A few days later, I waited for the bus to take me to school. It was Monday of the second week of the new school year. This was the day that everyone would be required to dress out for P.E. meaning to change into the gym uniform at the beginning of class, take a shower at the end and change back to street clothes.

I couldn’t do that. People would find out that I had tits. They would laugh at a boy who had tits. I wanted to cry but I couldn’t do that. A girl would cry, could cry, but a boy wouldn’t, couldn’t. And I was a boy. A boy with tits.

Just as Donna arrived to wait with me for the bus, I bent over at the waist and threw up green bile, since I’d had nothing for breakfast.

“Jon!” Donna exclaimed. “You’re sick?”

I shook my head. If I were sick, I’d have to go to the doctor and the doctor would find out that I had tits. I couldn’t let that happen.

“You are sick,” Donna decided. She grabbed my hand and tugged me back toward the house. “C’mon, we have to tell Mom.”

“Leave me alone,” I protested. “I’m not sick.”

“Throwing up is sick.” Donna pulled harder and I resisted. But I had forgotten that my sister, though a year younger, was several inches taller and more than ten pounds heavier. When she made a third try at pulling me toward the house, she started with a strong yank that left me off balance. Then she kept pulling as I staggered along, trying to stay upright.

“Let go!” I yelped.

“Mom!” Donna called out. “Jonny is being a poophead! He’s sick and doesn’t want to tell you!”

“D-dammit!” I complained, nearly tripping over some toy left on the lawn by our younger sister, Linda. Donna left me no slack to recover gracefully but dragged me on toward the front door where Mom and Linda were just emerging.

“Jonny’s a poophead! A poopyhead, a poopy-poop!” Linda chanted. Linda was four, on her way to day school with Mom who worked in the county administration building across the same parking lot.

“Oh, great! She heard you call me that,” I accused. Linda was that age where she repeated everything she heard, with amplifications and variations.

Donna grinned but hushed her. “Yes, he is, but we don’t tell the whole neighborhood about it.”

Linda clamped a hand over her mouth but giggles escaped like bubbles from a bottle of pop.

Mom rolled her eyes. Probably from the joy of raising a toddler who’s more than ten years younger than your other kids. Linda was the result of an unplanned pregnancy, or as she put it herself, “I’m an accident that already happened.”

Everyone paused in the driveway while Mom checked my temperature with the back of her hand on my forehead. “No fever,” she observed. “Are you sure you’re sick?”

“I’m not sick,” I said again. “I just threw up a little and Mahomet is making a Mountain out of it.”

Mom snickered. “You’re mixing metaphors, maybe you are sick.”

Linda asked, “What’s a metty-four?”

“It’s like a suicide slushie,” Donna told her “All the flavors mixed together. And he is sick enough to almost get barf on my shoes.”

“Sewer-size slushie! Sewer-size slushie!” yelled Linda.

“There’s the bus,” Donna added, pointing at the end of the block where the big yellow vehicle had just turned off the circulating road around the subdivision.

Donna put my wrist into Mom’s grasp and headed for the bus. “See you later, sickie,” she called back.

I started after Donna but Mom tightened her grip. “Get in the car, Jon,” she ordered. “Your color is bad, I think you are sick.”

“I’m not sick!” I protested, but I began to comply. Doing what your parents told you to do was just the way the world worked, even if you didn’t want it to.

Mom settled Linda in the child seat in back, while I buckled into the passenger seat. When Mom closed the back door and before she opened the driver’s door, Linda joyfully chanted twice, “Jonny’s a poopyhead! Jonny’s a poopyhead.”

Rolling my eyes but otherwise ignoring her, I tried to summon more arguments for not seeing the doctor. But it was too late, I knew. I wasn’t crying when Mom got into the car, and she didn’t notice the effort that cost me.

*

The humiliating examination over, and my shirts back on, I sat quietly on the end of the exam table while Dr. Silva explained things to Mom. The room gleamed with chrome and smelled of disinfectant, and I know I fidgeted without noticing I was doing so.

“It’s called gynecomastia and it is quite common in young boys who have just started puberty,” Dr. Silva told Mom, then turned to me. “When did you start noticing the swelling, Jonny?” he asked.

“I guess last winter sir. Just before school started after break. Around New Year’s. Uh….” I had to blush. “Some of the guys in gym class noticed, and teased me about growing -uh- tits.”

Mom and the doctor both smiled at that, but it wasn’t at all amusing to me. I looked around for some sort of solace. Mom put a hand on my arm, but I hung my head in embarrassment because I wanted to clutch at her touch.

“They’re quite noticeable now,” the doctor mused.

I could only nod miserably.

“If you were a girl,” said Mom, “I think I’d be planning on buying you a bra.”

“Not funny,” I managed to say, and could not keep the resentment out of my voice. Mom’s eyebrows went up but she didn’t say more.

“You’re how old? Fifteen?” Dr. Silva checked the chart. “Yes. November birthday. Hmm.” He looked up. “In fact, Jon, your development is almost median for a girl your age. Tanner Stage III or early IV.”

I didn’t understand the jargon but it didn’t sound good. I heard the blood rushing through my ears, felt my pulse pounding in my throat and temples.

Suddenly, the doctor spoke in alarm. “Bend forward, rest your elbows on your knees, put your head down,” he ordered. “Breathe slow and deep.” He reached for me.

“Huh?” I said. My vision began to turn red at the edges.

“He’s hyperventilating,” I heard the nurse say.

“We’ve got you, Jonny,” the doctor said.

The nurse stepped in to help and the three adults eased me down off the examining table and into a chair as I got my breathing back to normal by pinching my nose.

They talked past me for a bit, discussing blood draws, cheek swabs, and a possible ultrasound. “Feeling better?” the doctor asked when I looked up.

I nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that.”

Dr. Silva smiled. “It’s okay, Jonny. I know this is stressful. How are you doing in gym class this year?””

“Uh, we haven’t had to dress out yet. We only had two days last week, but today we were supposed to bring gym clothes and get lockers assigned.”

Mom frowned. “I didn’t know about that.”

“I didn’t tell you,” I admitted.

“Would you like a note to be excused from gym class?” Dr. Silva asked.

“I—you? Yes, please,” I answered. Wait. Going to see the doctor was turning into a good thing?

Mom was still frowning. “I guess you would get teased even worse with…” she made a vague motion. “Things,” she finished.

I nodded. They all looked at the very visible mounds in my shirt. The nipples didn’t show because of three shirts but the swellings were there if you knew to look.

“I’d say you’re about a full A-cup,” said the nurse.

“Maybe a bit more than that. His sister is a year younger and already a B,” said Mom.

The nurse opened her mouth then closed it again, apparently thinking better of what she had started to say.

“Is there anything you can do to help me?” I finally got up enough nerve to ask.

“Perhaps,” said the doctor. “We need to get results from the blood tests we ordered. Hmm,” he looked at his charts again. “You’re not shaving anywhere, are you?”

I rubbed my chin. “I don’t have anything to shave, sir.”

“You don’t have any pubic or axillary hair, either. You haven’t been shaving those areas?”

I knew what pubic meant but not the other word, but since I hadn’t been shaving anywhere, I just answered, “No, sir.”

Dr. Silva seemed to think this might be a wrong answer. “No depilatories? Waxing?”

“Uh—no, sir. I just don’t have any hair there.”

“Gynecomastia with lack of body hair, I know I’ve read those indications in a book somewhere,” Silva mused. “I’ll do some research. We’ll get the lab results back, and the nurse will make you an appointment for later in the week.” He smiled at me.

“Is there anything you can give me to make the -uh- swelling go down?” I asked.

Dr. Silva shook his head. “Not yet. We have to see the blood tests first.” He still smiled but I did not feel reassured.

“Do they itch?” the nurse interjected. Mom and the doctor both looked interested in my answer.

“Yes,” I said. “Almost all the time.”

“No pain?” asked the doctor. “Aching or throbbing or sharp flashes?”

“Uh—only if I bump them or scratch too hard.”

Mom and the nurse nodded while Dr. Silva frowned, but I wasn’t sure why.

*

Dressed again in the two t-shirts, one much too small, and my regular outer shirt, I felt like I was escaping the exam room while I followed Mom down the hall. She paused at the nurse’s desk on our way out of the clinic to make another appointment, this one for Thursday afternoon. “To be sure we have time to get the blood tests back,” said the nurse.

“Okay,” Mom agreed. “Four thirty Thursday then.” We moved through the waiting room, me imagining that everyone sitting around reading ancient magazines or playing with Lincoln Logs was watching my chest, though I knew that was unlikely to be true.

At the car, Mom said, “It’s almost noon. I’ve missed half a day of work and you’ve missed half a day of school.” Without an appointment, we’d had to wait to be ‘squeezed in’ to see the doctor. “Why don’t we declare a holiday and just take the rest of the day off?”

I was almost scandalized. This didn’t sound like my mother. “Okay by me,” I agreed as we buckled ourselves into our seats. “First period after lunch is Gym anyway, and I’ve got a note to skip that. So I’ll only be missing two classes in the afternoon.”

“Okay,” Mom said. “Let’s get ourselves a nice lunch then.” She steered out of the parking lot, headed toward the downtown mall. “You got any other secrets you’ve been keeping from me?” she asked casually.

I babbled a denial convincingly, and Mom laughed.