A Real Human Girl

I've said before that it took my brother an awful long time to resemble a real human boy. Adam went through an awkward phase. His awkward phase included such joys as acne in unfortunate places and--the real kicker--puffy nipples. The doctor explained that the puffy nipples were no big deal, that they were the byproduct of some sort of strange flux of hormones, that they would go away after awhile. Still, for several months, whenever my brother took off his shirt, there they were, those puffy nipples that looked like they belonged on the body of a thirteen year old girl.

There were other things, too. Incidents. The first involved a family reunion, a bag of golf clubs, a wayward swing by one of the cousins, and Adam's jaw that got knocked clear out of its socket and hung crooked from his face while the reunion and all its barbequed hamburgers were disbanded in favor of driving Adam to the emergency room. Once my family got him to the emergency room, the doctors wired Adam's jaw shut, and it stayed that way for months. He couldn't eat anything solid. We liquefied everything for him: spaghetti and meatballs, mac and cheese, beef stroganoff. He even went back to school with his jaw wired shut. We had to pack him special lunches, and he had to eat with the nurse every day to make sure he didn't choke. I remember feeding him a McDonald's french fry--a real treat--through the space in his teeth. He gummed at that thing like it was the best thing ever. Ambrosia! Heaven! A solid fry!

The other notable incident that shaped my brother's awkward period again involved a cousin, a wayward squirt of gasoline, and a bonfire. My brother had been standing too close to the edge of the flame, and when it roared up from the shot of gas, my brother's leg flared up with it. The skin and hair puckered. My brother screamed and screamed. And off he went to the emergency room one more time, where they treated him for burns, where they did the best they could with his leg. For years, his one leg was completely hairless and smooth, like a girl's or one of those cats you see--the ones who are all skin, no fur.

Adam did not have it easy. He had it worse than I did. And I have spent years watching him bumble through his awkward phase. I watched and watched and watched. Then, after I came home from Minnesota, I looked at my brother and said, "There. Finally. Almost a real human boy."

I had forgotten, though, how long it took me to look like a real human girl. Sure I've mocked myself considerably on this blog--oh, those old pictures!--but I never really sat around and thought about how long it took me to look the way I see myself in my head.

I was thinking about that a lot this weekend. When I was over at Amy and Becky's on Saturday--to celebrate Becky's 26th birthday bonanza--we stuffed ourselves full of tacos and then spread out on the living room floor. Then Amy put in a tape of her surprise birthday party from eighth grade.

Suddenly there we all were (well, not me--I was suspiciously missing from the party) on the screen. All our old friends were bouncing around in Amy's basement. They were singing. They were dancing. They were inhaling sugar as fast as they could get it clutched in their palms. Everyone was twelve, thirteen years old and wearing the best 90's apparel: scruchies and plaid shirts and boy jeans. It was really quite a sight.

"I'm HIDEOUS!" Becky shrieked.

"No, I'm HIDEOUS!" Amy shrieked.

I tried to tell them that, no, neither of them was hideous. That's just what thirteen year old girls looked like back then. We didn't wear short skirts or belly shirts. We didn't flounce around in the fashions we saw on the backs of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. We emulated Angela Chase. We had her shirts, her pants, her baggy clothes. We were exactly what thirteen year old girls who didn't have boyfriends (and wouldn't for years) looked like at that point in time. The popular girls--the ones who were rumored to have lost their virginity in sixth grade, the ones whose boyfriends were the boys we had devastating crushes on--didn't exactly look like us, but that's because they were busy being popular, and we were busy practicing our slick dance moves or fake-singing into our fists or hairbrushes. I wouldn't trade a second of that, even if someone told me I could've had Ryan McLean for my boyfriend.

But somewhere along the way, all that "hideousness" fell away. Our voices changed, we got taller, we shopped for better clothes. We got better looking. We got a handle on ourselves. For some, though, it took longer than others.

Here, for example, is me in eleventh grade:



Of note: the mullet-ish hairdo, the bloated face, the untamed eyebrows, the hideous vest. I look like I've been asleep for fifty years. I look sad and boyfriendless. I look a little bit like I might never come out of it.

But then, then, then, there was some sort of transformation, some sort of something that took place in my body over the course of a few months, something that took me from a girl with a shaggy mullet to this:



A real human girl.

(For the most part.)

(And, for those of you who are keeping score, the girl on the right is my former best friend, the girl who cried when I told her I lost my virginity.)