Photo by Shin Shimami on Unsplash

It was the summer of my eighth year, the forth of July, in fact, that the difference between girls and boys acquired more significance than girls have cooties and boys don’t.

The family had gone over the river and through the woods to Grandma's house (How else would you get there?) to gather for the celebration. Being a typical hot July day, we kids couldn't wait to head for the swimming hole. That was the pond about a quarter mile from the house with a small stand of trees preventing direct observation by the adults. That was an important consideration for my older sister (she was all of twelve at the time) since under her regular clothes she was wearing her first bikini swimsuit.

The bikini swimsuit that was soon to outrage Mom and amuse Dad. The Bikini swimsuit that was just a hair too small for her, but since she had to do a fast shuffle to buy it without either parent knowing what she was up to, she didn't have the opportunity to try it on to see if it fit.

I did not understand it at the time, but my sister was an early bloomer. Even at twelve she sported a solid C cup. Well, as actually a rather jiggly C cup that amply filled the bikini. Now at that point in my life, I had seen my mother and my sisters without a top on occasion – just a little kid, you know – and realized that girls wore something on top that boys didn't. The why of it didn't really matter enough to me to look into the subject any further until that fateful day.

Arriving at the swimming hole, a farm pond that would probably give modern parents apoplexy thinking of the germs and toxins that could be lurking within its vaguely greenish waters, but was just cool and wet to us kids. Maria quickly took off her T-shirt and shucked her shorts, then dived into the pond before anyone could get a good look at her bikini.

We did get a good look at something else, however. She surfaced with a screech and started doing what looked like a dance to me. After a few seconds I realized her too-small bikini had let her breasts loose and there they were, out for all the world – and all the cousins - to see as she tried desperately to stuff them back where they belonged.

The older boy cousins were far more appreciative of her terpsichorean talents than I was, but there was something that penetrated deep into my soul about my sister's breasts. For the first time the simplified explanation of the difference between boys and girls started to make sense to me. Breasts seemed to be a very cool thing to have on your body. There was something about the shape of them that was very attractive.

Now, of course anyone who has gone through puberty knows that there is a genetic predisposition in any male to admire breasts; it's a major reason why our species hasn't died out. Be that as it may, I was far too young to connect a love of the female breast with the vague concept of sex I had at the time. I just knew I would really like to grow up to have my own breasts.

Once the excitement of Maria's impromptu dance was over we settled down to some serious swimming, exhausting ourselves until called home for dinner. The boys were separated from the girls and told to take off our trunks and shower before getting dressed, which we grudgingly did. Our stampede to supper was interrupted by a very large woman (who I now realize had very large breasts) and we were commanded to rinse our trunks and hang them up to dry. Oddly, such intervention was not necessary for the girls, who automatically rinsed and hung their swim attire without being told to do so.

That's how, shortly after dinner was over, my mother discovered Maria's bikini. Mom let out a screech that left no doubt as to how Maria had acquired that talent for use in the pond, and the house rang with all three of Maria's given names as she was compelled to return to the laundry room.

Oops.

Naturally there was an audience of several cousins and a couple of aunts and uncles as Mom expressed her displeasure at Maria's sartorial choices. Not that she expressed herself in such high-highfalutin language at the time, but there was no doubt that Maria was not going to be wearing her bikini at any time before she turned eighteen and left our parent's domain.

Thus it came to be that the offensive garment appeared in the box of stuff that was destined for the secondhand shop a few days later. I had a brilliant idea, or maybe a brain fart, but a light-bulb went off and I realized that no one would notice if Maria's bikini wasn't in the box when it arrived at the store.

Now it was my turn to be fascinated by wearing a bikini. Unlike my sister, I was able to wait until just before the box was full and purloin the bikini from the middle of the pile. I hid it in one of my bottom drawers and could hardly wait until bedtime so I could see what it would be like to wear a bikini.

What it was was disappointing. I had not realized that my sister – my four years older sister - was larger than I was, so the bikini just hung loosely over my shoulders and the bottom wouldn't stay up. Being a resourceful kid, I purloined a couple of safety pins from Mom's sewing supplies, but that just made for lumps where I bunched up the fabric. Not a comfortable garment at all. No way I was going to be able to wear it.

I mumbled some words that I didn't dare say too loudly for fear of parental intervention and hid the thing at the back of my closet among the stuff that was seldom used. I would have to wait until I was big enough to fit into it to see what it would feel like.

Shortly after my disappointment I turned nine and hit what my beleaguered parents referred to as a growth spurt. The phrase eating me out of house and home became a common one in dinner conversations. My T-shirts started getting a bit tight. By the time the summer ended and school rolled around, none of my school clothes fit any longer.

Credit card at the ready, my parents took us to the store to outfit us for the coming school year. Maria complained when we didn't head for the Mall and the overpriced stores to be found therein. Me, I didn't really care. Clothes were clothes, other than not looking like a nerd to my friends I wasn't all that concerned. Actually, the only time I was really interested in the clothes I wore was when I purloined my sister's bikini. Not that I could tell anyone, but that's about it.

So there we were in one of the big department stores to get dressed for school. Dad and I did the boy's section and it really didn't take too much time. We got done and wandered over to the girl's section and prepared to wait. I guess someone had pity on guys that had to wait on wives or sisters because there were a few crappy chairs scattered around. Obviously we were going to wait, as Maria just couldn't be seen in those jeans! To my eye they looked just like the hundred other pair of jeans in the place, but what did I know?

Then there was the search for the perfect top, with Maria coming out in one blouse after another to have Mom vet them. Somewhere during the fashion show I realized that girls have a lot more choices in colors and styles than boys do. This had never made a difference before, but when Maria tried to get away with a very low cut blouse, one that clearly showed the bra she was wearing, I was reminded that I had her bikini top hiding in my closet waiting for me to get bigger.

Oh wait! I'm here watching Maria show off clothes because I did get bigger. Maybe…

As I mused on how much I had grown, I realized that I had been staring at a couple of rows of bras the whole time we had been waiting. Once again an LED started flashing in my brain. (I was a modern kid, incandescent bulbs were relics of the past.) The bikini top was nothing more than a fancy bra that you didn't hide under a blouse. Dad was involved in his cell phone game – I was too young for my own cell phone, at least according to my parents – and Mom was locked in combat with Maria. I casually arose and wandered about, eventually reaching the row of bras.

It was bewildering. Who would have thought girls needed all these different kinds of bras just because they had breasts. And the colors! Then there was the lace. Funny, when Mom and Maria hung out their bras to dry after washing them, they were mostly just plain white. I suppose if girls had so many choices in the color of their clothes it wasn't surprising that they had lots of choices in the color of their bras. What I couldn't figure was why Maria hadn't been begging Mom for a rainbow of bras to wear under her rainbow of clothes.

I guess I'll never understand girls.

"But Mom!" came floating plaintively over the racks of underthings.

"Over my dead body!" came the reply.

"It's not fair!"

Oh-oh. I had learned long ago that those were magic words.

Black Magic.

I guess my sister had realized her mistake too late, for she did not reply to whatever quiet response Mom had made. Knowing that my parent's attention was now firmly fixed on my wayward sister, I dared to reach out and actually touch one of the bras. It was pink and had lace along the cups. A label on the hanger said '34B,' a code I had yet to crack. The numbers seemed to go from 26 to 38 and the letters from AA to D. Just why anyone would need two 'A's didn't make much sense, but there it was. I had time to spot a DD at the end of the row, so maybe the people who made bras had a stutter.

That was all the time I had, because Maria, properly chastised, had finally selected her clothes and we headed for home, where I put my clothes away. I also took out my bikini. It had become mine by right of… Sneakiness? Curiosity? Pilfering?Anyway, Maria was not going to be wearing so I considered it mine.

Bedtime came, and I tried it on. It was still loose, but it almost fit. It was close enough I kept it on under my pajamas. It took a long time to get to sleep that night, I could feel that bikini top around me and it kept me awake and conscious of its presence.

That is until sometime about three in the morning. I woke up with the bikini top ruched up almost to my shoulders and bunched up under my back. Once again I was faced with an uncomfortable bra, or bikini top, or whatever.

Grump!

I suppose I need to explain why nothing much happened on the bra front for a good year or more. Is that a pun since I do have nothing to put in the front of a bra? Quite frankly, my interest in bras was just one of many interests. Maybe I'm a little ADHD, you know: look! A squirrel! but there were lots of things that grabbed my interest. Summer saw me and my buddies at the town pool, winter saw us on Suicide Hill with our sleds.

Somewhere in there my Dad taught me to play chess and I was hooked. I started running Track in middle school and was pretty good at it. For that matter, I was still young enough to love just riding my bike around town to see what we could find that was interesting. I certainly didn't lack for things to do.

So it was one quiet day I found myself home alone, just messing around on the computer and wasting time on You-Tube, when one of the suggested videos was how to fit your bra properly. Don't ask me why the algorithms decided an eleven year old boy needed this information, but this eleven year old boy was interested! For the next two minutes and thirty-two seconds I was enraptured.

Actually, for several two minutes and thirty-six seconds I was enraptured, as I watched it over and over. Then I watched several other tutorials. I was mildly disappointed that the models were always wearing something under their bras so I couldn't get a look at what a girl's body looks like. And no, I didn't try to look at any porn, Mom and Dad were trusting and I wasn't going to blow it.

The only thing I could do was climb up to the top shelf in my closet and get my bikini out. I swiftly took off my clothes and tried it on. In one of life's supreme ironies it was a bit too small!

Looking in the mirror, it was obvious that the bra cups were just flopping around. Being somewhat internet savvy, I figured that if there was a bunch of videos about fitting a bra properly there should be something to tell me how to correct those empty cups.

Boy, was I wrong! Lots of suggestions, but they all involved buying something or sewing something. Not gonna happen with an eleven-year-old boy who wants to wear a bra. In private! I used socks, lumpy but practical.

I wore it for an hour or so, but the thing sort of jammed itself under my armpits and dug holes. The bikini bottom wasn't a bad fit, however, my hips being much smaller than a girl's of equivalent size. I suppose the lesson here is that you need to keep plugging away or your chances might vanish.

It wasn't too much longer after that frustrating day that I realized my sister had a whole drawer full of bras. She had pretty much slowed her growth spurts and I was almost her size. I had an inch of height on her but, looking at the tags on her bras, I realized I was only an inch or so away from her band size. This presented a dilemma. If you ever had a big sister, you must know she can be very jealous of her stuff. I didn't want to think of what would happen if she caught me wearing one of her bras. I really did want to live to be twelve years old.

It took a while again, but I finally figured out if I raided the laundry chute in the basement a couple of days before Mom did the laundry there was a good chance I would find one of her bras in there. Problem solved, I wouldn't get caught in her room or mess up her drawers. That night I put my plan into action and darned if there wasn't a bra just waiting for me. I stuffed it in my pocket and took it up to my room, where I hid it until bedtime.

Back then I would have scoffed if someone told me I would be eager to go to bed early, but I sure was ready to do so. Not being a complete dork, I waited for my normal bedtime, then eagerly took out my purloined bra. It was pretty easy to figure out how the hooks worked, especially after watching all those bra fitting videos. Darned if it didn't fit just about right. Not too big, not too small but just right. Take that you three bears! A comfortable bra at last!

I had just about filled the cups and was ready to put on my PJ top when the door opened and Mom looked in. She started to say something but stopped mid sentence.

Suddenly my bra was more uncomfortable than it had ever been!