Did this ever happen to you? It didn’t?

Me neither.

Of course, if you substitute “Jack, older boy of my dreams” for “Andy,” “Jane” for “Holly,” and “somewhat memorable clumsy ungraceful bellyflop” for “gorgeous dive,” it may have happened to me.

If it did, I’ve totally forgotten all about it. I never think about it. I never relive it in a dream and wake up in a cold sweat of horror and humiliation and realization that Jack, older boy of my dreams, would now never look at me through the eyes of love and lust.

That’s harsh reality for an eighth-grade girl, you know, realizing that a cute boy wasn’t interested even after viewing my chest, which, at that age, was not unlike the chest of a nine-year-old boy. Nobody even applauded. Heck, they probably thought I WAS a nine-year-old boy.

Stupid two-piece swimsuit. Stupid law of physics that forced the top half up my Twiggy-like body over my head and into the wild blue yonder when I hit the water.

On second thought, it’s probably just as well that I hit the water feet first and lost my top. If I’d actually DIVED, arms outspread and head first, I might have lost. . . . oh holy scheisse.

No, I never think about that any more. Haven’t for years. Not thinking about it now, either.

People’s problems differ, don’t they. They actually make swimsuits in my size, even though they shouldn’t, but my problem with it now would be getting it ON, not worrying about losing it later. No law of physics or force of gravity would be able to remove it now. Colin Firth could, but he wouldn’t want to.

I read somewhere once, probably Erma Bombeck or the like, that trying to put a swimsuit on a fat woman was not unlike trying to put sheets on a waterbed. And that a fat chick in a two-piece was not unlike two rubber bands on an egg.

It’s been many years since I read both those descriptions and I still haven’t been able to get those horrible images out of my head. And now, neither will you.

Welcome to my world. Bwahahahahahahahaha. . . .