Karmic Augmentation

I can't say with any kind of honesty that I remember all of my life. I
do however seem to have many instances seared into my memory with the
red hot poker of angst with which they were forged. Being a teenager is
never easy. Sure, there are those rare (ie, popular) people who have
these great Prom Queen-Homecoming King moments. The people that remember
their teen years, not as a the mental equivalent of being put on The
Rack, but this cushy pink bubble on which they floated to adulthood. I,
unfortunately, fall into the first category. The not-so-cool category.
The floundering category. The still wake up in a cold sweat late for
first hour naked category.

One of the many moments of clarity I have in that time in my life is set
on one chilly fall afternoon. I was always staying after school for
something. Band. Detention. Flag Team practice. I usually had an excuse
to spend vast quantities of spare time not doing my homework, but
instead roaming around Warsaw, Indiana talking about girlie crap and
generally being a drain on society. This particular afternoon I was in
8th grade. The Junior High I attended was a little over a half mile from
my best friend Mona's house. She and I were co-nerds. We also hung out
with Nicole, a profoundly deaf girl who Mona and I were also close with.
We were totally dorky. Totally on the cusp of being social outcasts all
together, and clueless as to our sucktastic-ness.

I was the shortest, skinniest, and definitely the most underdeveloped
girl in our group. Perhaps in the school as a whole. I remember watching
all of my friends move into training bras, and on into cute frilly under
wire bras. I watched them become desired by boys, and I stayed firmly
ensconced in the role of "Little Girl". Ugh...how bad I wanted
something...ANYTHING...to put into one of those bras. To feel the itch
of the lace against my back. To know, somewhere in my head, that there
was something back there for someone to unclasp at some football game
somewhere under some set of bleachers. Alas, they did not come. I knew I
was flat as a pancake, and apparently, so did every boy my age in the
tri-county area.

This particular day after school Mona, Nicole, and myself were walking
to her house to wait for my father to pick me up, and take me home.
There were two boys from our grade who were also walking the same way. I
forget the name one of them, but the boy whom I cursed, I will never
forget. Rodney Lutes. He was no better off socially than I was. The only
ace he had to play was that a mans' measurement of puberty doesn't sit
on a shelf on his chest in broad daylight for all the world to see.
There we were. All of us walking. Talking about things that 8th graders
talk about. MTV. Who is actually "doing it"....Suddenly, out of the
clear blue sky of an October afternoon, Rodney turns to me, and says,
"You know...all the boys in our grade think your a carpenter's dream..."
I looked at him with a typical look that meant I had no comeback. "So,
retard, what the hell is that supposed to mean?" The next 10 words would
alter my life and haunt me to this day. "You're flat as a board and you
need a screw!" The crowd, all but myself, exploded in hysterics. Mona
even did the nice thing and repeated the sentiment in sign language for
Nicole. Everyone laughed. They knew he was right. I knew he was right.
Apparently the entire world knew he was right. I don't mean just us five
people, and I don't mean just Warsaw, Indiana. I mean the entire carbon
based planet, and whatever beings may have existed beyond the boundaries
of our solar system. I was a sub-par example of a female.

I went home, and I cried. There was nothing even my Mother could do. She
was my biggest supporter and advocate, and even she could not make me in
need or worthy of the Almighty Bra. She tried to reassure me. Told me
someday I would be like all the other girls. She said I wasn't alone in
my plight. Someday things would be different. I couldn't hear a word she
said. Secretly I cursed her, and the damaged DNA I had been the cruel
recipient of. All I heard was those words over, and over in my head. "I
am a carpenter's dream. I am a carpenter's dream."

Years went by. Freshman year. More of the same. I could wear the
make-up. Talk the talk. Even dance like the "hot chicks", but still,
nothing to invest in the bra depository. I was the only one in gym class
who still hid in the stalls to change. This was it. I was stuck. Forever
to be a girl like Kirsten Dunst in "Interview with a Vampire", only
without the getting to kiss Brad Pitt part. I would wear Garanimals, and
be 4'6" until the day I died. I was a freak of nature, and worse yet, I
was a freak with no boobs.

Then, one day something changed. My Mother, Sister, and I were in the
living watching TV, and there was a double-dutch jump rope competition
on. My Mother started a contest between my Sister, and myself to see who
could jump the fastest. Soon I was exhausted, and fell asleep. I awoke
the next morning for school, and to my surprise, I was no longer the
little girl I had been 12 hours earlier. I'm not sure to this day if I
shook puberty loose, or if it was just finally time?

Still, my Sophomore year held little more promise than my Freshman year.
All of the pain in the ass of puberty, with none of the "perks". I was
still flat as a manhole. I had no hope of ever being "normal". No hope
of ever having an actual date. The school year left, and so did I. I was
going to be a Junior. More of the same. I could have been paint drying
on the wall and at least then people would have noticed the smell.
Senior year. Finally I was in the home stretch of breaking free from the
flat-chested stigma. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.

I went about summer not really noticing much change. My shirts got a
little tighter. The AA and B bras I had been in for the past millennium
were getting too small. So I upgraded. I'm not sure how, or when it
happened. I'm not sure if someone slipped me Frosty's stovepipe hat. I'm
not sure if it was all those nights of praying...? "Please God, please
give me anything to put in a bra. Please..." I'm not sure if it was
voodoo, or just poetic justice. It was like lightning struck. It seemed
I literally went to sleep with nothing, and woke up at the end of the
Cleavage Rainbow. Somehow, someway, I went back to my senior year with a
DD. Now, in my mind, I hadn't noticed. I really had become so accustomed
to my malady that it was a part of my which I knew would never change.

The next memory is quite a different one. Again a fall day. I walk in
from the August heat to unload the dreaded texts from my book bag into
my locker. I have had a locker by Andy Grossnickle for six years at this
point. He and I are cool. He is THE most popular guy in my class. Maybe
the school. My locker door is open, and so is his, and there is small
talk. "How was your summer?" I look over. "Good. You?" He stands up to
start to walk to his class, "Oh, you know, HOLY SHIT!" I look over, and
it's as though someone has glued his eyes to my chest area. The area
once so loathed by myself, and all around me. "What????" I am frozen.
This has never, and was never, supposed to happen. "Um...it was good.
I'll see you later." He bolts. The entire rest of the day is filled with
murmurs. Rumblings around the hall. "She got them done you know..."
By the end of the day I am a bona fide Lady of the Evening complete with
fake boobs and a reputation, and I've never so much as touched a boy.
Literally.

I come from a modest family. I could never have paid for these. Like the
Rolling Stones said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try
sometimes you just might find you get what you need." Apparently, I got
what I needed.

It was a few weeks into the year before I saw Rodney Lutes. I don't
remember what I was wearing, and I don't remember the weather for the
day. My only precious memory of that moment is his face. I turned the
corner, and he stopped dead and stared. "What the...?" I looked and
sneered, my new weapons in full salute. "Hey. Guess I'm only half of a
carpenter's dream now, huh. Trust me, if I need a screw you'll be the
last one I call." I sweetly smiled, and walked away.

The moral of the story is, never discount the power of time, prayer, and
puberty. No one knows the secrets that truly lie inside of any of the
three of the Holy Trifecta of Karma. Life can drag you around, kick you
in the guts, and spit you out on a lonely highway with nothing to your
name but hope. But sometimes, you wake up with 36 dD's. Keep praying out
there girls. There's always hope. As long as there is one jerk out there
to stuff his foot in his mouth...even if it takes four years...there is
always hope.

The Magic Rock.

The Little Girl picked up the grey gravel pebble from the semi-circular
drive outside of the tiny white bungalow. It was standard issue gravel
driveway fill. Off white. Porous. Chalky. It was no different from the
tens of thousands of rocks littering the driveway and the alley on the
small street in the small town with millions of rocks in hundreds of
driveways. She turned the rock over in her tiny hand. To her, this small
child, it was something spectral. Something beautiful. She was magic, so
she had to recognize magic, right? She dusted it off on the leg of her
courdory pants, and ran to the front porch of the house.

On the front porch sat the only two women she could honestly say we her
"role models". Her Mother and her Aunt. At the age of six, no little
girl realizes she is building the framework for her entire life with
every gesture, and every decision. If she did, surely the pressure of it
all would crack her. This being the case, life is a game of dolls and
her Mother's make-up. Of watching "Grease", and believing in her heart
that one day she truly can be Sandy. Beautiful, yet pleasantly trashy at
the same time. The best of all worlds. Every day, every moment, every
instant a grain of sand follows her until it builds up into the Great
Dune Of Adulthood where life is never again to be as simple. This day
she is Six, and the world is wrapped up in leg warmers and disco.

She knows her Mother loves her. That is fact. She has drawn her mother
pictures, and made her macaroni necklaces enough to fill all the Hope
Chests in all the universe. Her Aunt, on the other hand, she has given
very few of these treasures. She runs to the porch, and the two women
take a break in the crammed in conversation of two sisters who live
hours apart, to focus on the girl as she runs breathless to them. "Here,
Barbie, I got this for you. It's a Magic Rock (she knows, because she is
magic...)...Keep it forever, and it will bring you good luck." Her Aunt
takes the dusty gravel pebble, and pushes it deep into her pocket. "I
will. I will keep it forever." The little girl smiles. "I'm going over
to Zachary's to play." She speeds off the small porch, and the women
return to their conversation. The moment passes, and life goes on. The
grains of sand continue to form a Life.

Many years pass, and the little girls grows into a Woman. Her life, as
so many lives come to find, never goes quite the way she had expected.
She never became Sandy. She put away the dolls and began playing games
that involved Boys and Heartbreak instead. The grains of sand continued
to build until a Giant Dune had accumulated full of moments, and
experiences. Sadness, and Joy. Family, and Disappointments. Dreams that
Came True, and Dreams That Changed. Somewhere along the journey up that
Dune, she lost her magic. It was so much that she lost it, as she
stopped believing in it, and it slowly faded away.

Her Mother and her Aunt grew and changed, too. For although they were
well into womanhood when the little girl was still small, they grew and
changed just as she had. There were Loves, and Losses. There was
Sickness and Divorce. There were many years where a little magic could
have gone a long way. All the while, the Aunt kept that Magic Rock
comfortable in the velvet lined pocket of her jewelry box. There it was,
and there it would stay. Waiting until the time was right to release the
Magic.

One day, the Little Girl turned Thirty years old. Her Aunt sat on her
bed, and thought of the Little Girl. She thought of the things she had
seen, and the things she had lost. She thought about how many
disappointments that thirty years had handed that Little Girl. She
thought about all the hope that Little Girl should still have inside
that seemed to somehow be missing. She went to the jewelry box, and
retrieved the Magic Rock from its slumber.

In the years that had passed, the Aunt had become an artisan making
beautiful jewelery out of glass and beads. She took the Magic Rock and
encased it in a clear glass with beautiful adornments and hung it from a
long black satin string. She fired it, and cooled it, and wrapped it in
a gold box. She put it into her bag and left.

It was the holidays. She traveled the many hours to see the Large Family
that had once just been the Little Girl. There were many nieces and a
nephew now. They sat there in the living room around the tree. Each one
they opened their gifts, and thanked each other for many things, but the
love more than the gifts. Finally it came time to open the Magic Rock.
The Little Girl now a Woman of Thirty picked up the box, and opened the
shiny gold paper. She opened it, and saw the beautiful piece of jewelry
in the box. Looking closer she saw the chalky white stone. "It's your
Magic Rock..." she said. She told the Little Girl Now a Woman the story
of that summer day long ago, and the rock she had kept all these years,
and the little girl looked at it again with a tear in her eye. She had
forgotten the day, and the event, but she seemed to remember the rock
somehow. Somehow it looked like something she had hidden deep inside her
heart...Magic. "I thought maybe you could use a little Magic." She said.

The Little Girl placed the necklace around her neck the next time she
needed hope. To many it would have been merely a rock. To her it was
time, and love, and the Great Dune of Adulthood all wrapped up in a
shiny package. It was more priceless than any diamond. She knew once she
had known magic, and hoped maybe this would give her back her gift. She
felt it hang by her soul, and she smiled. She remembered Hope, and
Dreams. She remembered Infinite Possiblilty. She remembered Belief. She
wondered if the Magic Rock still worked. She once again held the rock,
and felt its smooth cool beneath her fingertips. She inhaled a long,
deep, clean breath. She breathed out, and saw, for the first time in a
long time...she saw Tomorrow. The Magic Rock did work. She found her
Magic again.