(this is annie)


I took the Real Age test, and guess what? I am sixteen going on seventeen. Weird.

Last night I dreamed that I hated looking in the mirror, that everything I saw was odd-looking. In reality, mirrors make me feel ambivalent. Curious, sometimes—what do I look like to other people? Do they, too, think I look like Jay Leno?

I think this insecurity is rooted in childhood (what a shocker). I was a disarmingly beautiful baby, an adorable toddler, a cute young child. Why my parents didn't throw me into child acting, I will never understand. We could have made millions, I tell you. Millions!

I was radiant until second grade, when the family fangs came into place. My baby teeth were forced out by large teeth twisted in all directions. They required orthodontia. The sight of an eight-year-old in braces makes adults cluck in sympathy. It makes fat bullies named Nick call the poor kid names like Bucky Beaver. Which scars, you know.

Around fifth grade, I started to notice a funny little mark on my cheek. A beauty dot, my mother called it. An odd spot was more like it. By that time the braces had come off. But it was too late to fit in with the popular girls. One of them was forced to play with me, and the afternoon went surprisingly well. Only after she left did I realize that she had stolen my favorite Barbie clothes!

By sixth grade, my latest obsession was breasts. I knew I had to get them to become a young woman, but how? Puberty was an elusive and intangible vixen. Worse yet, I had a sinking premonition that a the only kind of chest I was going to have was a hope chest. My female classmates began to bud, as it were, and as they explored the risque world of 30 AA training bras, I was stuck wearing sissy little cotton camisoles with bows on the front. I used to contort my back and wear blousy shirts so that the telltale unbroken line of my vertebrae would not betray my lack of bra.

At that time I was also convinced that shaving my legs was of utmost importance. The problem was, my mother wouldn't allow it. "You'll do it once and then you'll have to do it all the time," she lectured. "It's not worth it." Of course I sneaked into her bathroom, borrowed her razor, and soap-and-watered my way into flicking the Bic. Nobody noticed my smooth legs.

Some other time I will discuss my second puberty and how it continues to this day.

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