“Katie, get out here right now!” My mom’s voice pierced me like a knife. I was waiting for her to call me into the living room of our vacation cabin. It almost came as a relief when she called for me. I had been sniffling and laying on my back staring up at the dirty ceiling for what felt like an eternity waiting for the call.
I knew what I did was wrong on so many levels. I didn’t have any clue what my parents would do. They weren’t tyrants or super strict. They made me wait in my bedroom because even though they were raising five teenagers they had never dealt with anything like this, and they had to talk about what the consequences should actually be.
I didn’t get myself in trouble intentionally, but so much of this was my fault – it was like a perfect storm of choices that I made placing me in this situation. I wished I could be anywhere else but where I was – but I was here, and I had to face what I had done.
The unknown was eating me up on the insides and causing my mind to swirl with all the possible ways my life would probably become a living hell. This was supposed to be a fun vacation! I had gone and mucked things up and it was all my own fault.
“KATE BUTTS! GET YOUR ACTUAL BUTT OUT HERE! RIGHT NOW!!” Dad wasn’t in the mood to play around or be trifled with. His commanding voice sent shivers down my spine, and I hopped out of bed and back to my senses.
I should mention that yes, my last name is “Butts” and yes, I’ve been teased about it since I was in grade school. I am 15 now and I still meet people who think I am joking when I tell them my last name. Dad says having the name “builds character,” but I do not believe it. Mom said she loved Dad so much that she took his last name anyway – it’s adorable in a weird way.
I composed myself, dried my tears, and walked out of my room like a convicted prisoner making her way to the gallows after her last meal.
You are probably wondering how I got in this jam. It’s a complicated and humiliating story, and I know I screwed up – several times before today. Some of this wasn’t my fault either – it was just the cards that life dealt me and the choices that I made.
I had just graduated my sophomore year in High School. I was in a Wal-Mart in Raleigh North Carolina. It was a nice summer day, and the sun was shining, the birds were chirping. My mom brought me and my siblings there to buy some things for an upcoming family vacation. You may be wondering why I am going back to a mundane shopping trip, but I assure you that things that happened that day set a lot of things in motion that would end up snowballing later in unexpected ways.
I was trying to convince my mom to buy me a high-waisted French cut yellow polka dot bikini. It was the kind of thing that my older sister Lindsay would wear to turn heads on the beach. I had always considered myself a shy introvert but recently I wanted to get noticed by boys my own age and be taken seriously the same way Lindsay was.
I wasn’t built like Lindsay though. She was 19 and had curves in all of the right places, shapely boobs, and naturally blonde hair. She had developed early before she was even my age and looked and acted like an adult. That’s why she was always in charge when my parents were out.
Lindsay often jokingly refers to me and my little sister Ruthie the “Itty Bitty Titty Committee”. I used to be completely flat-chested with no waist. Recently, I sprouted two puffy nubs that are almost entirely areola on my chest. Lindsay has a slightly twisted sense of humor, but she doesn’t mean anything hateful by it. It doesn’t make it any less annoying when she calls me the President of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee in front of boys. They can tell that I do not have big boobs without hearing her laughingly joke about it.
My little sister is flat as a pancake. However, she has the gorgeous blonde goldilocks hair, fair skin, and natural beauty that even Lindsay is a little jealous of. Ruthie is a natural dancer, singer and loves life. She can light up a room and she is incredibly silly.
Her twin brother Georgie is a lot like her. He’s handsome, like a young Brad Pitt. They both recently had a birthday and just turned 14. They are already as tall as me and I am almost 16.
I have one other brother named Lucas. He is the only one in the family with red hair. I consider him lucky because I inherited my mother’s poop-brown hair color and everyone else got lovely natural light blonde from my father. Lucas has got freckles like me, and he is taller than me even though he is only 9 months younger than me.
I somehow wound up with the nickname Freckles even though we both have them. I do not have a lot of freckles – just a light dappling of brown specks across my nose. It really gets my goat when any of my siblings dares call me Freckles even if they mean it as a term of endearment.
I am short for my age, and people often think my younger siblings are older than me. It doesn’t help that I have freckles and an extremely light complexion. Mom says that I should be happy that I look so young and not be in a hurry to get old – but it sucks because now that Lindsay is working, she expects me to step up and help keep my younger siblings in line.
The only reason my mom hadn’t dragged Lindsay along with us shopping was that she had just started a new part-time job. I was expected to do her job this summer. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t have chores of my own. It just meant that I was responsible for keeping an eye on my brothers and sisters and make sure things didn’t get out of hand.
Georgie and Lucas have a lot of energy and can get rambunctious and rough house when my parents or Lindsay isn’t around. They never do anything seriously wrong and even if they did, they are Mom’s “perfect angels” so she would usually overlook it.
Don’t get me wrong, my parents spank them and wash their mouths out with soap when they say dirty words – but it was pretty rare.
My Dad was at work. He was working overtime to help pay for our trip. My mom is incredibly thrifty, and she justifies that by pointing out that we need to save to be able to go on vacation.
My brother’s spread out in the clothing section and began playing a form of hide and seek where they both seek each other and punch one another in the arm. Mom didn’t tell them to stop. I suppose I was supposed to do that. Lindsay would have punched both of them in the arms and told them to knock it off.
I do not want to paint my older sister as a mega-bitch. She just didn’t put up with any nonsense from any of us. I was unsure of myself and didn’t really see myself as the one who could put a stop to what they were doing. I will be very honest, it’s not that I am lazy, but I also just didn’t WANT To be the one in the middle telling them to knock it off.
I had just asked my mother to get me a proper bikini this year. Her response was predictable. I do not know why I expected anything else.
“You are TOO young for a bikini like THAT,” my mom declared so loud that half the people in Wal-Mart probably heard her. “You are not too old that I won’t put you over my knee right here in the store! So, stop asking!”
My mom threatened but she rarely followed through. My parents do believe in spanking. They call it “loving domestic discipline.” It simply means that they love us, but they don’t always love what we do. It is a last resort to spank or be put in the corner. It is supposed to be embarrassing and uncomfortable– it’s supposed to remind us not to do the same thing again.
It wasn’t like I was asking for something slutty like a belly ring or tattoo. I tried to make the case that I should be allowed to have it.
“But Mom,” I whined. “Lindsay had a bathing suit like that when she was my age!”
I really wanted a French cut bikini like older girls wore. It wasn’t a microkini or anything outrageous. I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything like a thong. The one I wanted was a matching top and bottoms that wore high on the hips and had yellow polka dots. They sold it in the Junior Miss section of Walmart – how shocking could it really be?
“You are not like Lindsay when she was your age,” my mom replied stubbornly. She was right about that – both physically and mentally. I wanted to LOOK like Lindsay at 15 but I looked young for my age, and I was fairly short. I thought maybe the bikini would make me LOOK mature.
“Yeah, but if I have to do her job of watching Lucas, Georgie, and Ruth Ann then I should be treated the same as her,” I demanded and folded my arms stubbornly. I knew I was dangerously close to my mother following through on her threat. She wouldn’t make take my pants all the way down in the store, but she definitely would have spanked me over my shorts.
“I can watch after myself,” Lucas took a break from sparring with Georgie. Lucas was only 9 months younger than me, but he was incredibly goofy, and mom didn’t believe he could be unsupervised. It was part of why he got away with more than me. When he did something stupid or careless, she often assumed he just didn’t know better and often times- he really didn’t.
She usually didn’t extend the same benefit of the doubt to me.
Lucas is mama’s golden boy. He can do no wrong (in her eyes). He’s at that age where he’s started trying to wear dad’s aftershave and putting on deodorant. If I have friends come over, he sometimes embarrasses me by staring at their boobs. He definitely looks at porn – of that, I have no doubt.
Mom didn’t even respond to Lucas. She looked a little beleaguered in the store – like working and the stress we gave her was wearing on her nerves. There was no question she needed a relaxing vacation.
“Katie, your body hasn’t developed yet. You’ve got plenty of time. Right now, you are all awkward elbows and knobby knees. One day, you’ll have a figure for a bikini. This one will slide right off in the Atlantic Ocean. There is nothing wrong with a one piece swimsuit. I’ll be wearing one!”
Oh great, I’ll have on a swimsuit just like my mother wears, I thought to myself.
“Let’s wear matching SpongeBob swimsuits,” my sister Ruth Ann suggested brightly. A brightly colored cartoon character on the front would be even MORE humiliating.
Ruthie is the eternal optimist and life always seems to serve her lemonade WITH sugar before giving her bitter lemons. She was confident, positive and naturally beautiful and while I sound jealous
- I probably am (a little jealous of my little sister). Ruthie won the genetic lottery – she is destined to grow up beautiful. She isn’t just pretty though – she seems to be talented at just about everything she tries. You should see her art! It’s all pink ponies and flying kitty-cats, but it looks really exceptional.
Ruthie has a cute turned-up nose that made her look like a Disney Princess. Even though she had just turned 14 she still loved romping in the mud and getting messy like her brother Georgie. If Lucas and Georgie were her golden boys, then Ruthie was her perfect angel. Ruthie never intentionally did anything wrong, and I can’t recall a time that my parents, or even Lindsay for that matter has ever had to even make her stand in the corner.
She is goofy and playful, but that kid does not have a mean or jealous bone in her body.
Georgie is good too. He’s gregarious and a little naïve. He really looks up to Lucas and he’s his older brother’s constant shadow. I know Georgie is starting to notice girls, but unlike Lucas – Georgie has several girls in his grade swooning over HIM. He’s going to grow up to be a real heartbreaker one day.
“It’s good that you want to grow up, Katie. You should want to mature. Mother nature takes a little more time, and everybody develops differently. You’ll get there – just don’t be in such a rush. Stop and smell the flowers,” Mom offered her friendly advice. “You are way too young to worry about things like being sexy. Now, how about this SpongeBob suit? It would fit you perfectly.”
Mom held the ridiculously childish swimsuit up to my body to size it. I was so mortified because some boys were shopping with their mom a few feet away. They saw my mom hold the immature costume up to my body to get a size. I was mortified.
“How about Sandy Cheeks since you are Katie Butts? You can be Sandy Butt Cheeks!!” Lucas waved around another one-piece bikini with an image of a buck-toothed cartoon squirrel-girl wearing a space suit on it. Sandy is SpongeBob’s goofy girlfriend – and I’d be wearing a big image of her on my chest whenever I went swimming.
I shot him a sour look, but I think Georgie didn’t even notice. My little brother probably wasn’t intentionally trying to make me look like a fool. I just wished he wasn’t trying to be so “helpful”.
Mom had a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude about harmless teasing even if that is what he was doing. She let Lucas get away with saying anything he wanted to me as long as he didn’t cuss. That was a ‘wash your mouth out with soap’ kind of cardinal sin in our house.
Naturally, the rule about cussing didn’t apply to my parents themselves or to Lindsay. I think my parents would have preferred Lindsay not cuss, but she was old enough that she came across like an adult and they accepted it.
The boys that were eavesdropping were trying to stifle their giggles when they heard my brother say “Sandy Butt Cheeks”.
I could already tell what kind of summer I would have if I ended up with the suit – but I assumed I probably would.
Ruthie actually loves her last name. She also has a perfectly well-rounded butt and not a flat as a pancake butt like mine.
“Butt-Butts-Butta-Butts!-Butt-Butts-Butt!” Ruthie sang our last name as she often does when someone mentions it. She danced around playfully without a concern in the world for what anybody thought. It’s easy to do things like that when you look so beautiful. I’ve never seen her get nervous, embarrassed, or apprehensive about anything other than thunderstorms, and even then, she looks cute when she pouts and makes a worried face while nuzzling into Daddy’s arms to protect her.
“Can we try them on, Mommy? Please? Pretty please? Pretty PUH-LEEZ with whipped cream and sugar sprinkles on top,” Ruthie begged. I didn’t want to try the suit on. I assured my mom that if they weren’t our size we could always come back. The tag said “M”. It wasn’t like there were a lot of choices.
“No, we cannot. I am going to be busy and then we’ve got the trip coming back and a lot to do to prepare,” Mom pointed to the dressing room, and I knew she wouldn’t back down.
I took the Sandy Cheeks one-piece, and my sister got the Sponge Bob one. Mom insisted we also try on a “S” small one even though I was positive I was too big for that one.
My brothers were happy to try on bathing suits as well, but they were lucky. All they had to wear were shorts. I could hear them in the boy’s dressing room poking each other and laughing at each other.
My sister and I rushed off to the girl’s changing room and just as I thought the small one did not fit. I yelled out to my mother and told her that it didn’t.
“Let me see it! Stop looking at yourselves and come out here at once!” Mom demanded impatiently.
“Maw-awwmmm!” I groaned. I didn’t want to be caught dead walking around the store in this outfit even for a few minutes while my mom saw me. Mom wasn’t going to come into four different dressing rooms to check us out though. “Other kids just come out! Stop acting like a Princess and get out here right now. You are on my last nerve, Katie!”
My sister thrust aside the curtain and burst into my changing room without a thought for my modesty.
“What if I had been naked?” I flinched in shock. Ruthie blinked with a dumbfounded expression because I was not naked. She couldn’t process that I was worried about something that did not happen.
My sister changed together all of the time and it wasn’t a big deal for her to see me naked in our room. She applied the same logic to seeing me in the dressing room. She didn’t care that she just pulled the curtain open wide and if anyone was standing just outside of the women’s changing area, they might have seen me naked.
“But you weren’t,” my sister giggled and led me by the hand to show off her pretty suit to mom. Mom paraded us around the mirrors and tugged our suits to see if they were going to cover us nicely. “These are cheaply made in China. In my day, you got one swimsuit and you could wear it until you grew out of it,” Mom lamented as she patted us down and checked how snug the suits were. The suits were tight on us. They weren’t see-through but I was keenly aware that the outline of my puffy nipples could easily be distinguished through the material. I knew those strange boys were probably watching all of this.
My sister stood there like a prize pony while mom poked and prodded. I am sure I was blushing awkwardly. Mom said I was “All bony elbows and knobby knees,” as she checked me over to make sure that all of my bits were covered, and the suit would not give. “Oh, stop looking so worried. Boys at the beach would have seen a lot more of you if you wore that itty bitty bikini to the beach! What’s the big deal?”
“We aren’t AT the beach, Mom!” I groaned. Mom ignored my complaints and impatient eye-rolling and kept tugging and poking.
“You should be thanking me. If you rush me and your entire ass ends up hanging out at the beach, don’t come crying to me!” Mom chuckled before deciding that the suit was acceptable. “Yes, I think this will do,” Mom decided. I was relieved but I was worried. I didn’t want to tell her about what. “What? What is it, Katie?”
“Guys will see the outline of my boobs through my clothes,” I whispered through gritted teeth.
“Wait until you actually get boobies,” Mom acted like there was nobody watching and held her own rather sizable jugs in the palm of her hands. “There is no popping these back in once you get them. No one is going to care that you have boobs. Every girl has something. Now let me see the medium on you and hurry!”
I groaned and went back to the fitting room, but there was someone in mine. She apologized and said that she didn’t think it was still being used. She even handed me my clothes and the medium suit. I almost panicked thinking that she might steal them. My mom would have thought nothing of making me go home in the swimsuit. We went drove home from the community pool in our swimsuits all the time.
I just would have been really embarrassed to walk through Wal-Mart like that!
I would have been happy to wait for the woman to leave but she had a lot of clothes to try on. Mom was rushing me, and Ruthie offered to change with me. I didn’t get a chance to agree before my little sister tugged me into her booth.
We stripped out of our suits, and I noticed that Ruthie was finally starting to get dark pubic hair. It was just a whisp of a bush, but it made her look like Lindsay between the legs. I could still see her slit. She had a beautiful slit that reminded me of a peach. I don’t make a habit of describing my sister’s vagina, but you will see why when I tell you about mine.
My pussy looked like a thin line in the front. The only place I have blonde hair is the wisp of pubic hair just above it and on my legs. When I was little and took baths with my brother Lucas used to say “it looks like you have a butt crack In the front.”
I am very self-conscious about my body – and despite wanting to grow up and show off a little. I don’t want to show off a whole LOT! Just the parts of me I am happy with and there are not that many (yet).
My clit hood is hiding just inside and when I finger myself, I love to mash it down. When it pops out completely and my clothes rub it just the right way it gives me little orgasms – but my pussy lips don’t do anything sexually for me. The lips on my face are thicker than my pussy lips and probably more sensitive than my pussy lips.
I know I probably come off as a naive virgin. I had sex twice with a boy by this point in my life. They were awkward encounters in closets at friends’ sleepovers – very unsatisfying. I also masturbated quite a bit at home under the sheets in my bedroom. I had to do it under the covers because I shared a room with Ruthie.
I had recently discovered the joys of laying on my back with my legs above my head and letting the bath water splash directly on my clit. I was technically having a deeply romantic and committed relationship with the faucet in my bathtub at this point in my life.
In any case, you are probably wondering why I am telling you this story. It isn’t just because of the embarrassing shopping encounter. That really wasn’t that unusual for me. Fate kind of smiled down on me that day.
I am starting here because I didn’t know what I liked about myself, about boys, about my body, about sex, about life. That summer I would learn a few things about what I liked – and a whole lot about what I didn’t.
That didn’t happen at Wal-Mart, but it began there even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
As soon as my sister changed into the medium-sized one-piece, she ran out singing “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?” and raised her fists in the air to sing the chorus “SpongeBob SquarePants!”. She has a lovely singing voice that keeps perfect pitch. She was encouraging me to follow and sing with her “Come on, Katie! Sing it with me ... Absorbent and yellow and porous is he!!!”
Ruth-Ann could have a ball in a damned Wal-Mart!! My sister could entertain herself just about anywhere and spread joy while she did. It was hard not to smile when she was dancing around like that. I reluctantly joined her even though I was hanging out of this suit.
The suits hung loose on both of us – very loose. I felt like I was the suit was going to drop off of me at any moment. I wasn’t sure what was worse – too tight or too loose! They were both totally humiliating.
“Oh my god, you’ve got a bush!” Lucas pointed at my sister’s crotch. A patch of her dark and curly pubic hung out of either side of the crotch area of the suit. Ruthie smiled and shrugged – she didn’t care if he saw her dark and curlies.
“Lucas!” my mom scolded him for yelling that out in a Walmart. Everybody nearby heard him and looked in our direction. Dirty old perverts and younger guys alike turned their heads and watched my sister dance to a carefree rendition of “If nautical nonsense be something you wish, then drop on the deck and flop like a fish!!” before falling on the floor and gyrating around.
Ruthie seemed oblivious to the stares, the laughter, and the derision from older women who turned their nose up at her. She thrived on attention, but I do not think she even realized she had it. She isn’t stupid, she’s just oblivious at times.
“What?” Lucas threw his hands up in the air to signal that he shouldn’t be the one mom was mad at. “Ruthie is the one flopping her fish!”
Mom glared at him, but she wouldn’t get angry at her perfect boy Lucas, and she certainly would not find fault in innocent Ruth Ann. “It’s just hair, everybody has some,” my mom touched her own shoulder-length hair and let it fall on her shoulder to prove that body hair was no different than the hair on your head.
“Bald men don’t have hair,” Georgie said as he leaped on the ground and flopped around with his sister. He looked really cool shirtless in his swimming trunk.
“Katie doesn’t have hair,” Lucas snickered and pointed to his own crotch.
Have you ever seen those old-timey cartoon thermometers when the temperature gets really hot, and the red mercury builds up until it explodes? That was my beet-red face in that moment.
“Lucas! You shouldn’t be peeping on your sister!”
“I wasn’t, I swear!” Lucas said. I’ve suspected him peeping on me when I showered but I’ve never been able to prove it. I take great care to make sure that no one else sees me naked. If Mom and Dad ever spank me, they always do it over our clothes or if it is a big deal, they might spank us over our underwear.
When we went to Myrtle Beach three years ago, my mom didn’t bother putting bikini tops on me and my sister and nobody cared when we were at the splash pool and the beach. That’s probably the last time he’d ever even seen my bare boobs! I was as flat-chested then as he is now (and unfortunately mine are still underwhelming small).
“If Katie had crotch hair, it would be hanging out of the side of that baggy suit like Ruthie! What? You said everybody had hair down there!” Lucas was being a smart-ass, and I think he knew Mom’s patience even for him was wearing thin. I glowered at him, but Lucas didn’t stop trying to defend his comment.
“Don’t say crotch hair or I’ll march you to the bathroom and wash your mouth out with soap. It’s called pubic hair and you know what I meant when I said everybody EVENTUALLY gets hair down there,” Mom warned my little brother to drop the subject. She made Ruthie get off the ground and adjust the hair back into her suit before deciding without belaboring the inspection that these suits simply hung too loosely.
“It would probably wash right off you when there was a big wave!”
“Woo-hoo! Then we could swim nakey at the beach!” Ruthie leaped up and down and bounced a little. Her tight little butt didn’t even jiggle.
“I can assure you, Ms. Ruthie Ann, that if you did lose your suit at the beach after I pay $29.99 for it that I would make you stay that way for the entire vacay!”
Ruthie shrugged, because she didn’t see the problem with that. She did like to be naked in our room and she also didn’t really know the value of money. We are on a limited budget and Mom was outraged about the prices of things ever since the so-called “Global shortage” due to the pandemic.
“If this is too much, maybe I could wear something else?” I asked hopefully.
“Everything else costs even more than this,” Mom told me that one day I would understand just how hard she had to work to afford to provide all of this stuff, and maybe then I would appreciate it. I did know she worked hard but I let it drop. Mom decided to make us change out of the suits we were in.
“Can we wear them home, Mom?” my sister twirled her way back into the changing rooms.
“That’s quite alright,” I muttered sarcastically under my breath. I had enough humiliation for one day being seen at Walmart trying these on was bad enough. Mom even told her to change so that the cashier could ring it up first.
“Just let me lay on the conveyer belt and the lady can go BOOOP,” my sister ran an imaginary price scanner over her flat tummy to pantomime being rung up and placed in the shopping basket. Mom smiled proudly and giggled at Ruthie’s joke.
We returned to our changing room and there was nothing in it. The small suits were gone (thank God) and the clothes we wore initially were also gone. All that remained were our shoes. I was just lucky I had kept my phone in my hand, or they probably would have taken that as well.
Ruthie’s reaction was not one of consternation or even concern.
“Woo-hoo! We can wear these home!” she raised her arms above her head triumphantly. I began to check other booths frantically. This couldn’t have really happened. Who would take my clothes? There was no attendant around who might have cleaned out the booth.
Lucas and Georgie suppressed their chuckling while I panicked. Mom told me to remain calm and stop embarrassing her by freaking out. Embarrassing her? I was forced to wear this fitting swimsuit hanging off my body while everybody else besides my mom only half-looked for our stuff.
“You don’t have anything anybody cares to see anyway, not yet anyway,” My mom said. I had my arms wrapped around my chest and periodically moved my hands down to adjust the bottom of the suit, so my ass crack and slit didn’t pop out. She was trying to comfort me by suggesting that nobody would care, but it came across as a put-down.
I felt all these eyes on my body. Leering men, and snobby derisive women looking down their nose at this silly girl frantically searching for her clothes through the Junior Miss section.
“Yeah Sis, just be glad you have no boobs. If you did, they’d have popped out by now,” Lucas said. Mom glared at him, but she was the only other person really helping me look.
“I don’t know who would want your clothes, but I guess you girls get your wish. You can go home like that after all,” Mom announced.
I wasn’t able to remind her that this wasn’t my wish before Lucas and Georgie cheered and echoed my sister’s request to leave the store wearing our new suits.
Now, I should mention that my Walmart is the typical Walmart you will see in North Carolina. There are women who wear very revealing outfits. They wear no bra, and their knockers swing freely, some of them wear no panties and we’ve seen more than our share of butt cracks (both women AND men) at Walmart.
However, that’s THEM, not me.
“Fine, can we get the smaller suit, though?” I begged. I didn’t want the suit in the first place, but I definitely didn’t want to slide out of this thing.
“It’s fine, and you can grow into it,” Mom said dismissively. Lucas seemed amused by my misfortune. He had nothing to worry about. He wore his shirt and his new swimming trunks. Georgie didn’t put his shirt on and just wore his swimming trunks.
My sister was singing songs of exultant joy about SpongeBob SquarePants and perfectly fine with whatever Mom decided. I was the only one whining and Mom wasn’t tolerating that from me. She had made her decision and that was final.
“Next year if you grow out of it, and I’ll have wasted 30 dollars on something you only got to wear a few times!!”
I was very self-conscious about my diminutive size and how silly I looked hanging out of the bathing suit. My mom was clearly not going to give in to my demands, but as I said earlier fate had smiled upon me.
The apathetic store clerk who didn’t do anything more than a cursory look around for our clothes overheard us speaking.
“Ma’am, you have to buy those swimming suits. Your daughters can’t just put them back because they wore them without any panties on underneath,” the clerk informed my mother in a shrill and annoying tone.
“How would you know if my girls wore panties under them when they tried them on or not? Were you looking?” My Mom was incensed. She would be the first to spank our butts if we did something wrong, but she can turn into a defensive mama-bear if someone else accuses of us of doing something wrong that she didn’t think was true.
Mom obviously didn’t like being challenged by the clerk. It was the principle of the matter that bothered her.
Unfortunately, I had to endure more unwanted attention while they bickered. Now, all these perverted men heard my mom bickering back and forth about why we wouldn’t have worn panties. “How else could I tell if they bunch up or not?” she demanded an answer in a loud voice.
The clerk annoying reiterated the store policy and that only drove my mom angry.
My mom was unlikely to get me the smaller suit when I asked for it. Skin-tight wasn’t going to do much to hide my budding breasts, but it was preferable to the one that would probably fall off with the first big wave. Mom is incredibly frugal so the possibility of buying TWO suits was out of the question.
She did, after all, have to outfit four kids and we still had other things to buy like sunblock and food. That changed when the woman challenged her, and suddenly my mom insisted on buying me the smaller suit just to prove a point.
I was quite happy that my mom was standing up for me. She wasn’t an ogre or a tyrant. She was just a woman who works long hours and has five teenage kids at home and sometimes she could unravel. This was one of those times.
I assumed all this humiliation would at least end with me getting a suit that was snug but fit and I suppose fat was truly smiling down on me for that reason.
You may be wondering what this trip to Walmart has to do with fate or why I brought it up when I was being punished. It’s going to take a little more time to explain how it is connected to me being punished. The reason I say that fate was smiling down on me was because I met a boy! A handsome, tall boy with a British accent.
“Mums can be a bit embarrassing, sometimes, eh?” A boy with an English accent said. He was slightly older than me. He was standing around checking out the jeans when my mom and the clerk began their heated argument. He consoled me and instead of laughing at me for draping myself in an oversized squirrel-themed swimming suit he actually empathized.
He told me that he had just moved to Raleigh from England; he said he found America quite charming but that the people themselves left a lot to be desired. It took me a moment to realize that was an example of his dry British wit. I didn’t understand how America could be charming if the people were irritating. Pod’s jokes were often so deadpan you didn’t know it was a joke until you thought about it for a bit.
I asked him why he moved to America in the first place. I was really just using it as an excuse to listen to his lovely British accent. I also believed that as long as he was talking to me, he was looking in my eyes and not down at my absurdly cartoonish swimsuit.
“It’s not to bloody take it back for the British Empire. I think we missed a real bullet on that one. Thanks very much for having that revolution,” he quipped before admitting the real reason was that was his parent’s decision. I loved that he called his mom “mum”. That sounded so quaint!
“Pod! Where have you gotten off too?” his mother called for him.
Oi, that would be MY embarrassing mum. She can be quite brash. Don’t worry though, eventually, we grow up and then we can embarrass our own kids one day, eh?” it was nice that a cute boy took an interest in me. He dashed off after that and I found myself wishing I had given him my number. I didn’t want to seem too forward, and I was shy, so obviously I didn’t run after him.
He was tall and cute, and he seemed impossibly clever and well-spoken for a teenage boy. He certainly wasn’t like any boys I knew. His accent alone made him seem refined and considerate, but he was genuinely nice to me. I would wonder about him all afternoon – where did he live in Raleigh? What did British people even eat? Was it the food as us?
I had completely forgotten how loose the outfit was. I hadn’t held the top closed or adjusted the front and back and he probably caught a glimpse down the top. I didn’t really mind if a boy like him saw me though.
Mom handed me a smaller swimming suit and insisted that I put it on. “You better take EXTRA care of this suit after all the arguing that I have done, and you better not grow too much because you need to make this last at least two years to my money’s worth!”
I would have agreed to anything to not have to wear the baggy suit. Even though Ruthie didn’t complain Mom also made her change into the suit.
Unfortunately, the tag of the new suit read “XS” and not just “S”. It was skin-tight to the point that it was almost like I was wearing nothing at all. It bulged in all of the wrong places. I effectively had camel toe and the shoulders bit into me.
I didn’t want to come out of the changing rooms because the suit was obscenely too small. The clerk had summoned a manager and now my mom was arguing with her. Mom is stubborn and she didn’t back down. The manager acquiesced after 15 minutes of argument.
All the while I had to stand awkwardly off to the side while people noticed my outfit and giggled. Ruthie made the best of it and twirled around like a ballerina. I kept waiting for a slight lull in the costume to tell my mom that I would go back to the baggy suit after all and that they could stop arguing.
That wouldn’t be possible though as we were told to pay and leave.
“But Mom, this suit doesn’t fit either!”
“Katie, you are impossible sometimes. You are like Goldilocks. This suit is too big, this one is too small!”
My sister was being silly, and she added in a lisping baby voice while pointing to herself, “And this suit is just right!”
“See? Why can’t you be more like Ruth Ann?” Mom asked.
The matter was closed. Mom would not reconsider, and I doubted the manager was willing to let her exchange the smaller suit for anything else either. We might have been able to get through Walmart and pay relatively unnoticed if my little sister didn’t start making incessant farting noises with her mouth while bending at the knees and giggling. Georgie joined her and they had a grand old time fake farting through Walmart.
“Mom? Aren’t you going to stop them?”
“Katie, you are going to be the one in charge during the day. You’ll have one job and that is to simply maintain order until I get home. I should not have to stop them when they are doing silly little things like that. That’s your job now that Lindsay has graduated high school and taken a job. If you want them to stop, then handle it!”
“Quiet!” I demanded, but my brothers and sister ignored my pathetic attempt to establish dominance. If Lindsay had even glared at us, we would have fallen in line. I suppose that is why my mother was convinced it was so easy.
I might have kept trying to get my brothers to pay attention to what I was telling them, but I noticed that British boy from earlier. He waved at me and offered a sympathetic smile. His own siblings were running amok, and his mother was trying to chase two of them down.
His mother was half-laughing as she said to one of her mischievous kids “You cheeky little monkey! I’ll pull those knickers down me’self and call the vicar to give you a proper spank if you don’t settle down!”
“See what I mean? Halfway around the world and I am thrilled to see that American parents are just as embarrassing as English ones,” Pod shared with me.
My mom was paying in line, so she didn’t notice that I was talking to a boy. She probably would have called me over if she had.
“My siblings are worse,” I glanced over my shoulder. Lucas had joined in on the fake-fart fight and they were pointing their butts at each other, cocking them with them their legs, and have a fake-fart gunfight of sorts.
“That looks like good fun, that does,” Pod offered a light chuckle and cocked his leg slightly, and did a single imaginary fart. I couldn’t help but smile. He wasn’t reveling in it like my brothers and sisters. He was just showing me that it wasn’t quite as bad as I made it out to be and I appreciated that. Pod noticed that I had changed my swimsuit. “Have you grown a bit since we last met?” he joked dryly.
“It’s a long story,” I groaned and rolled my eyes.
“Oh, thank God, I rather love long stories! Short stories always end right when you fall in love with the main characters,” he said in his engrossing British accent. It made everything he said sound so much more interesting and cleverer. “I’ve discovered one thing about Greenville since we have been here, and that is that it is quite boring. I know this is terribly forward and you’ve probably got a boyfriend, but would you mind if I gave YOU my number and you save me by texting me your story some time? I would be ever so grateful.”
To say that I was flattered and had an instant crush on him was probably underselling it. I was more than happy to exchange numbers with him and promised him a story.
One of his younger brothers ran up and began teasing him. “Arry has a girlfriend, ‘Arry has a girlfriend!”
“Piss off, wanker!” Pod turned his little brother around and gave him a light kick on his butt.
“Arry? I thought your name was Pod?” I asked.
“My real name is Harry with an H, and my last name is Potter, and I am British. Fancy that? I’ve brown hair and must wear glasses, so rather than have every punter ask me to introduce them to Hermione so they can chat her up some time, I go by my nickname, Pod.”
“Pod? How did you get that nickname?” I asked. I heard my mother calling my name to leave. It sounded like Pod’s mom was calling for him as well.
“My original name the Artful Dodger was already taken,” he referenced Oliver Twist and let a wry smile form on his lips before promising me that truth of his nickname was a dreadfully long and boring story, and he would be happy to tell me all about it. He held up his phone and bid me farewell.
I felt like I floated away because I was so hopelessly enamored with Pod. I barely noticed that I reached behind my back and pulled the tight little suit out of my ass crack right before I left. I prayed that he didn’t watch me walk away.
