Megan at Fried Okra has asked that we who can, stand with her in her public mortification and share our most embarrassing moments. If you are a man, you may stop reading...shoo, go away. Nothing here to interest you, I promise, but I simply cannot bear to let a fellow blogger down, so here's my story...

I have never been what you would call a "well-endowed" woman. Although I'm just shy of 6 feet tall, the biggest I have ever been was a "D" cup, but that was when I was 85 lbs overweight and pregnant. Normally, I'm in the "B" - "C" range. So when I turned 12, my brothers all pitched in and bought me a "Hope Chest" - a 44DD bra. In an attempt to comfort me, I can remember my mother telling me, "Don't worry, honey...they'll just pop on out there one of these days and you'll be just like me." She was a "DD"...and I was still waiting for them to grow in when I was 21. But I digress...I'm supposed to be telling you my most embarrassing moment...up to this point, I've just been laying the foundation for what would become the worst day of my life.

When I was 14 years old, my high school band and choir classes took a trip to Hawaii to participate in a music festival. It was scheduled for the first week in April and I,like most of the other students going on the trip, spent the months preceding the trip raising money to pay for it and working odd jobs around my neighborhood for some extra spending money. The big day finally came and I was on a jet bound for the Big Island with about 112 of my classmates from Choir. I had never been to Hawaii, but my BFF Kara Wilson (I can say that because her last name is no longer Wilson now that's she's married) had been several times and she informed me that the first thing we were going to do when we got there was to go shopping for bikinis.

Now, I wasn't crazy about the idea of a bikini. I had big hips and no boobs. Not a great bikini combo...no Pamela Anderson was I. But I caved and went with her anyway because I only had one bathing suit and I'd need at least two since we'd be on Oahu for 10 days. I quickly found the bikini of my dreams. I can still see it to this day. It was a fluorescent peach color with beautiful Hawaiian flowers on it. String bikini, that is. I yanked a size 11 off the rack and quickly scurried to the dressing room and tried it on over my underwear. The bottoms fit perfectly, but, you guessed it, the top was way too big. So I had to get re-dressed and go back out for a size 9 top, which fit better, but still had what I call "puckers". It was definitely lacking something. Boobs.

The gentle sea breeze beckoned us as we stepped out of the shop and we decided to go straight to the beach after returning to the room. I put my beautiful new string bikini on and took a look at myself in the hotel mirror. Kara stood beside me in her bikini and although I was slimmer than her, I somehow felt that she looked much better than me because her boobs were larger...and because teenage girls are prone to comparing, I did what any normal 14 year old lacking in the cleavage department would do. I created some. With kleenex. Well, toilet paper, because apparently the hotel we were staying at was so high class, you didn't need kleenex. Kara helped me shape it so they looked semi-normal and so you couldn't see the tissue and off we went to sunbathe, strutting our hot stuff on down to the beach.

After about 20 minutes in the Hawaiian sun (we were Alaskan girls, remember?), we were drenched in sweat and ready to do anything to cool off. One of the boys from our class told us that if we swam for a few minutes and then came back out, we'd be cooler. I suppose I could blame it on the heat of the sun -- it had to be heat stroke, because there's no other explanation for me doing what I did. I swam. In the ocean. With toilet paper stuffed in my bikini top.

When I came out to lie back down on my towel, I noted with satisfaction that some of the guys on the beach were staring and smiling at me, so I raised my chin and pulled my shoulders back a bit with pride.

It was not until I reached the towel that I noticed I had shredded bits of toilet paper streaming out of every side of my bikini top.

Visit Megan and stand with us, won't you?

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