Uniform

34 

Once my mother had gotten comfortable telling degrading stories about me to my face, this soon meant she was comfortable saying them to any friend I might have visit. By the end of Nineteen Seventy-Six, she started telling a story of the time she dislocated her knee soon after moving to the family home. This happened when she was in the yard and fell to the ground and found she couldn't get back up. I was with her, she said, around two or three years old, and the rest of the family were away at a game. In response to her being stranded and in pain, she told me I picked up rocks and threw them at her.

Now this story had something to it that the other stories she would tell didn't: Physical evidence. She had kept the ACE bandage once used to wrap-up her relocated knee in the medicine cabinet at the family home, and it was one of the things she had brought with us during the move and put it into the apartment's medicine cabinet. I remember when I was younger seeing it in the family home and one day asking her what it was. She told me it was the bandage used to wrap-up her knee after it was dislocated, but she didn't tell me any details at that time.

By early the next calendar year, she had started telling this story to any friend I would bring over. This was exasperating but I didn't know what I could do about it. I couldn't call her a liar because I didn't know if it was a lie or not, but at the same time I had grown up hearing her tell bogus stories about me to other people in the next room, let alone derogatory stories about other people to me that I had doubts about. Then the solution occurred to me, she had a small brown birthmark on her forehead. When she would tell the story to my friends in the future, I would seem to acknowledge the story by saying, ''That's how she got that bruise on her forehead.'' Mother seemed befuddled by that response, but at the same time didn't know what to do beyond giving me a glare. And it was effective for my friends as they didn't know if that was another detail to the story that she had told me privately and if so, how could she still have a bruise after so many years? A grain of salt was added to the story in their minds.

The morning after I told mother of the strange thing that was happening to me, I found that ACE bandage on my bed. I picked it up, wondering why it was there and asked mom. She said, ''It's for...'' and she motioned toward her chest. It took me a moment to guess what she meant, then a longer time trying to figure out how to use it. Wrapped around my budding breasts it did help with the pointiness and chaffing, but not as much with the bulging.

Along with the breasts, my hips had started to fill out and I was having problems pulling on my pants over them. As it was normal to need larger clothes as one grew up, this didn't cause any concern when I said I needed new pants. We went out and looked for some and I found a problem. Guy pants are largely the same size from hip to waist, girls' taper inwards from the hip to the waist as the waist is usually smaller. By getting guy pants that made it past my hips, there was a lot of loose space between my mid section and the waistband. This would let the pants slide off, not an ideal situation, but if I got a pair too tight on the hips that might show more of them than I felt was good. I got the larger pairs of pants and solved the sliding-off problem by having one or both hands in my pockets when walking. While it looked casual, it was, actually, so I could hold up my pants.

The following week, I was at the family home for the mid-week father visit and noticed the various bits of army equipment leftovers that he kept on shelves at the top of the basement stairs. Looking it over, I caught a glimpse of a belt. Unlike typical belts with holes, this was a continuous band of woven material without holes but with a pinching clasp allowing the belt to be set to any length needed. This was perfect for my needs and I took it and used it on my pants. While it worked, it gave the waist a draw-string bag look, but this was easily solved by no longer having my tee-shirts tucked into the pants.

When it came time to go back to school for eighth grade, I spent the week before looking in the mirrored sliding doors of the apartment closet. Earlier I had found my baggiest tee-shirts had been the ones with pockets sown on the left side and that leaning forward for pictures let the material drape and hide the chest-level bulges. While I could lean forward sitting at school desks, I couldn't very well walk down the school hallways while leaning forward all the time. Then I realized how flexible shoulders are and I could roll mine forward, this pulled the material from my chest and it draped to a flat surface.

Still, this looked rather dorky with my arms hanging before me like this and I put them in my pockets. This kind of worked as it looked like my shoulders were rolled forward so I could reach my pockets. Yet with both hands in my pockets it still looked a little funny. Also, how was I going to carry my books? One hand out, I grabbed my new notebook folder for the year and held it, first to my hip, but that didn't allow my shoulder to be rolled forward enough, so I held the notebook in front of my pants pocket. That worked, but I realized it would be better to always use the right hand for this as holding the books allowed for my shoulder to be rolled forward more than if I had a hand in a pocket. With the left, if the draped shirt should blow back as I walked, the shirt pocket would distract from any bulge that might touch from underneath.

Everything seemed set for my return to school look, but the draped, hanging shirt front still seemed to stick out as people's shirts normally touch the front of their body. The final touch was when I remembered back to second grade and the twin girls at lunch with one of them bulging out her tummy in order to pretend she was pregnant. If I bulged out my stomach, it would make contact with the lower half of the shirt and I could even use that as another distraction by peoples eyes noticing it rather than anything that might be going on at chest level. But how to do it?

I could loosen my stomach muscles, but that didn't cause much of a bulging tummy; I needed to push it out as well as loosen the muscles. I realized that as I breathed in the chest filled and expanded, but if I tightened my chest, the diaphragm made the abdomen push out instead. And I had it! While having my diaphragm lowered like this all the time reduced the amount I could breath in and out, it wasn't as if I'd be panting walking up and down the halls at school.

Staring in the mirror to check out the final look, I felt this could work.

It became the uniform for the next decade of my life.

impatient?  Paper, eBook
help me break even: Shop