Pop Your Balloon

Corsets in all their glory! Now on the website!!

The hottest boy in my fourth grade class was named Eb Scroggins. I know, right? What's more is that his brother was named Obe, and his brother's BEST FRIEND was named Zeb Sturgeon. Holy night! You can't make this stuff up. So, Eb had a sweet early-90's buzz cut, a surprisingly strong jawline for his age, and freaking dimples. Yup, all the girls were in love. In particular was the most popular girl in the class (It's so nice that the popular kids always end up in love....right? I mean, in the movies, the popular kid goes bravely outside their circle to befriend a loner....a strange, quirky, witty delight that ends up.....having to change themselves to become another one of the crowd. Huh. That's depressing. Phew, back to the story!) named Jessica Tatum. It's always a Jessica, isn't it? (sorry to the GOOD Jessicas out in the world! I know and cherish a few of you....but your name has been soiled.)

The coolest kids in the class formed a soccer group at recess, and it was super elite. Like, we're talking Skull & Crossbones Society type of crap here. I certainly wasn't part of the group, but my friend Brenda had managed her way in, which is where this story comes from. You see, all the girls in class were all sorts of jealous of Jessica Tatum, because she had blond highlighted hair and it managed to never lose it's perfectly curled 90s glory. She also had..um..."bloomed" rather early, and as all of us women with breasts know, you can't stand it when you don't have them, and then when you have them, you complain about them..?? (My deepest gratitude goes out to the few of my customers who have just been  happy with their breast size. Way to go! And no need to launch into an attack about how the too big of breasts hurt your back. I know that, gals. I have heard everything and anything about breasts over the years of doing corsets. ;) Trust me, gratitude takes you miles further than disappointment and complaining.)

Anyhow, Jessica and Eb were "going out" together, which I believe means to literally "look at each other and giggle sometimes, pass maybe 5-6 notes a week, and hang out within around 20 feet of each other at recess." They were always down on the soccer field of elitism, looking cool, and doing whatever cool kids do. One day, they were in a particularly aggressive game, and Eb had to leap in and push someone out of the way to get to the ball. That someone was wearing a white shirt. That someone suddenly had an inexplicable and sudden splat of brown goo leaking out of that white shirt right up in the chest area. That someone was Jessica Tatum. 

Apparently, Jessica had been stuffing her little training bra with water balloons filled with chocolate pudding! I mean, I'm not sure if it was always chocolate..maybe sometimes it was vanilla, but holy FREAK, pudding!!!!! Part of me looks back and admires the creativity, and part of me wonders what was wrong with basic wadded up toilet paper. Yeah, so Jessica ran off the field very quickly and her mother came to pick her up. 

We didn't see her for another week. I'm not sure what was going on in her little brain. Honestly, I've never understood the brains of the girls who just naturally have that "certain something" and attract all people to them like sugary drinks attract insects. Like..if you got inside their brain, do they actually, on some level, BELIEVE, "Yeah, all boys like me. Girls like me and are jealous of me. Everyone wants to be with me."  Or is it like the narration in my own brain, which..uh....certainly doesn't sound like that?

The crazy part is that she still came back to school with head held high, no one ever talked about it again (except here on my blog.......and no, I didn't change the names to protect the innocent. The names were too perfect. Sorry, guys!), AND she still had perky, early blossomed breasts. Holy cow! It was a Martha Stewart level comeback!! 

I've always took this story and used it as an illustration in my life to show me two things. Number One, you can handle a LOT more than you think. Number Two, all of us are probably doing a little bit of...um..pudding balloon stuffing. All of us want to be the first, be the best, be admired, get noticed, feel special. All of us have vastly different, and sometimes destructive methods, but we all are filling our balloons with SOME level of pudding and stuffing them somewhere in our lives....and maybe that's okay. Maybe it's a "fake it til you make it" type of deal. Maybe it's that we are just displaying something decorative on the outside that we KNOW is on the inside and will eventually find its way out into reality. 


Just watch out on the soccer field. Don't let anyone pop that balloon.