Two Uniboobs to Rule Them All (Part 1)

"You're not down and out, when you're down and outgoing"- Corin Raymond

Middle school is a perfect storm.

It’s an intersection where peer-to-peer cruelty vibrates at its highest level and we, as pre-teens, are objectively ugly. The clashing of these two facts makes for a tumultuous time. It’s when growth spurts and acne goatees are spotlit for ridicule, refusing to debut quietly (insert “jazz hands” here).

Puberty is life’s hazing period. It’s a public humbling that breaks you down, but while broken, injects a permanent sense of humanity. In the down-troughs of our shittiness, we grow decency .

After elementary school, I went to the town’s middle school that drew tweens from all over. Centennial was a bonafide junior high. There were lockers and pay-phones, band practices and sport-team tryouts. Girls doused themselves in Hawaiian Tropic spray and boys smoked at recess. 

Elementary’s hopscotch and popsicle stick creations were out. First kisses and emotional warfare were in.

We were kids, imitating teenagers, who were impersonating prison-trajectory adults.  

In Grade 6, I was in a homeroom with new faces from all over town. In our class, there was the usual collection of shy kids and cool kids, smart kids and troublemakers. There were also a bunch of middlers, ADDers, plus the quintessential nerd-with-transition-lenses-and-a-bad-attitude. 

While we were mostly homogenous, there was a classmate that stood out amongst the rest. Literally.

After what could only be described as a biology-defying, bonanza of a growth spurt, a girl named Laura stood a solid foot above every man, woman, and child in our middle school. She looked like Will Farrell’s character in Elf— oversized and crumpled at her desk, sitting amongst pre-pubescent dwarfs.

A few weeks into the school year, we arrived at the day that puberty smiles upon most cruelly: picture day.

Before lining up for our individual headshots, we were instructed to congregate at the gym’s stage for a class photo. 

As our scarf-wearing photographer approached, he was visibly perturbed. Shaking his head, he looked at Laura, and pointed her immediately to the back row.

The rest of us were instructed to fill in the gaps around her, looking like dotted visitors to Laura’s Christ the Redeemer mega-statue. 

With everyone in place, the photographer backed up, looked through his lens and let out an exasperated sigh. 

“No, it won’t work!”, he yelled, pointing at Laura. 

With all of us on stand-by, he shuffled Laura around, ordering her left and right. He trialled her kneeling, hunched, rolled-over, balled-up, sitting, and squatted. With each pose, he returned to his camera, shook his head in disgust and pulled another pose from his “groupshot 101” hat.

For a few moments, we settled on Laura as back row center. However, in this position, she was yet another focal point. She was a skyscraper in a landscape of one and two-story homes. She looked like a human church steeple with clouds and pigeons circling above. We used a pulley system to adorn her updo-ed spire with a Big Ben-inspired clock. 

After a few clicks of the camera, our photog threw up his hands, and forced Laura to the ground. Then, had her snake across the front row like a charismatic teen crashing a group photo.

Even this would not do. No matter the position, the photographer huffed and puffed about Laura putting the balance off-kilter. 

Finally, just shy of excluding her altogether, he settled on her standing beside the class. 

Note: The “beside the class” is a position that transcends language. In classroom photos across land and sea it is placement respectfully known as: “the teacher”. 

A few weeks after picture day, our printed photos arrived. Eagerly, we opened our packages to discover who would be doing the walk of shame straight into photo retakes. 

Swiftly, the classroom began to stir. 

Clutching the class portrait, one of the ADDs excitedly blurted out a theatrical, “Ahahaha!”

Immediately, our attention shifted to the group shot. The pose with Laura standing beside the class had won out.

To our delight, and Laura’s horror, she was labeled “Miss Kowalski”—the youngest middle school teacher North of the border. 

Note: In 27 printed, highly collectable hard copies, Laura’s growth spurt would be forever commemorated. To this day, it serves as an archival schadenfreude for late night Show & Tells across the Halton region.

Without the genealogy of a dutch cyclops, I didn’t hit my growth spurt until the following year. 

This is when my face, like many other twelve year olds, went through the Picasso-esque facial resorting. 

During the Picasso shuffle, your entire face goes rogue and like Laura under siege, must trial a whole mash-up of positions and ratios. Suddenly, noses take centimeter side-steps, eyes space apart, and mouths contract into a catalog of butthole configz. Before making any permanent plans, each of your facial features sets-up shop, slings a few muffalettalla sandwiches, skips rent, and essentially squats in territories they shan’t belong.

Alongside the Picasso face shuffle, entered the great hair rebellion. What our forefathers failed to mention is that hair also goes through puberty. In one fell swoop, frizz and puff get overlaid onto haircuts ill-equipped to handle such textures.

For instance, a pin straight bob can/will turn into a curly Judge’s wig with sideburns overnight.

For older millennials, myself included, this top-mop transition happened before the advent of the almighty straightening iron. 

And we did suffer. 

On a Friday, I had long, straight hair. By the weekend it had coiled into a 1970’s male heartthrob shag. 

Prior to the arrival of my new tapered coiffure, I spent the year with some part of some sandwich lodged between braces brackets at any given time. At school, I was required to attach rubber elastic fangs to my metal hardware. These taut elastics snapped off without a moment's notice, slingshotting into the faces of friend and foe. 

They snapped hard and often.

To cap it off, every morning I also awoke to a new bra size. Once again, I lacked the proper equipment and know-how. My boobs were like pointy soft serve cones with one not-so-secret ingredient: 90% swollen nipple. I harnessed them in bralettes that couldn’t have supported a marshmallow.

I was a pervert’s sci-fi creation: a wigged uniboob firing-off mouth elastics.

I was awkward. I was homely. And I desperately wanted to disappear. However, my pulsating chin zit (and desire to be in on the action) wouldn't let me.

Fortunately, this most vulnerable time coincided with a fateful meeting: a best friend named Lainey.

They say “like attracts like”, and this is true. Lainey had braces, wore oversized orange Modrobes, and had also recently transitioned into a uniboob. Our shared transformation, and a homeroom teacher who loathed us both, drew us together.

And things would never be the same.

Tune-in next week for Part 2, of Two Uniboobs to Rule Them All—when things get well, silly.