Andrew M's: Guns, Ammo, and Boobs: A Tale of First Nudity

One of the dangers of growing up a younger sibling in a large, eleven-member family is that you are too often in the way. I don't mean that in a wounded, emotional, after-school special kind of way; I mean simply that in an overcrowded house where the majority of your older family members are twice your size, you are physically going to be in their way, a lot. The normal consequences of this took the form of getting accidentally knocked down, tripped over, crushed in the back seat of a car, your head sat on, etc. -- almost on a daily basis. The resulting bumps and bruises were a constant companion, and already at the age of six I was beginning to numb to the pain. Then my brother Richard bought a BB gun.

In a family full of Potsies, Rich was our Fonzie. Every family needs a rebel, and Rich enthusiastically carried that flag. No true rebel is complete without a small to medium-sized cache of arms, and Rich had them all: pocketknives, bullwhips, swords, firecrackers, cuffs (both hand and thumb) -- the man was a veritable quartermaster. One day, Rich added to his arsenal the holy grail of the badass cannon (outside of an actual cannon); a gas-powered BB gun. A target practice was immediately set up.

The second floor of my childhood home had a long hallway that ran directly through it, that was unobscured by any furniture or light fixtures. Reminiscent of a target range, it was the best place to test out the firepower of a new BB gun inside the house (though is there ever a "best" place to test out a BB gun inside a house?). Richard set up a perch at the far end with, if I am remembering correctly, my brother Bill at his side to assist with BB reloads. He then fired off many rounds of BBs down the hallway, aimed at the door to my sister's room. I heard the commotion from a side room, while preparing to cross the hallway diagonally to head downstairs. Hearing the THWAPS of the discharging BBs, I paused to ask Rich for a ceasefire so I could clear the hallway and use the stairs.

"I'm not going to stop shooting -- just run quick, and I won't hit you," came Rich's reply. He was excersing his older-brother privilege to mess with me. Despite his accrued weaponry, Richard was not at all a physically cruel sibling; but he did enjoy the occasional psychological torturing of we younger ones. Taking it for granted that I had no alternative (such is the bargaining ability of a kid brother), I agreed to the order and ran my chubby legs off to cross the 5 feet of hallway to reach the staircase. Whether by accident or deliberate act, Richard did indeed fire a round off at me while I was in transit (I have the idea to this day that he probably didn't intend to hit me, but rather just scare me with the whooshing sound of BB fire). Whatever the intent, a BB rocketed from the gun, moved past the wrinkles in my Osh Kosh pants, and THWAPPED right into my uncorrupted butt-cheeks.

The sting was immediate and the pain overwhelming. I fell to the floor. My face flushed red and tears welled up in my eyes, and I began to cry hysterically. Richard came to my aid quickly and picked me up off the floor. He apologized profusely, and seemed genuinely upset that he had hurt me. I, of course, couldn’t stop wailing and immediately my screaming echoed through the sparse hallway and amplified to fill the whole house. Richard’s initial concern necessarily morphed into a sense of self-preservation; where there was a screaming child in our house there was bound to be a sibling who had caused the upset. Once the culprit was identified, there would usually follow punishment from my parents. Rich had to shut me up.

He pulled me into his bedroom just off the side of the hallway. He knew he had to distract me with something that would take my mind off the pain and get me to calm down. Being 6 it really wouldn’t have taken that much. I could have been happily distracted by one of Rich’s keyboards, or some of his old Star Wars action figures, or even a few of his model kit cars (there were always model kit cars). But the mind of a 15-year-old does not work the same as a 6-year-old’s, and in his panic reached for item that would have placated someone of his own age: the latest issue of Playboy magazine.

And so it came to be that I saw my first glimpse of boobs. It certainly did the trick in that it quieted me up real quick. But still being at an age before an interest in girls really kicked in, my fascination was more dispassionately scientific than anything else. Of course I was aware of boobs at that age; it’s hard to spend most of your life looking up at people and missing them. But my mindset at the time was more like “I wonder what the deal is with those things,” rather than “I need to see some of those.” Learning the deal that day was not a particularly revelatory experience; the architecture made sense to me in that it seemed that was the only way those things could work.

Regardless of my level of interest in the product, there was still a palpable sense that I was looking at something I wasn’t supposed to be (I assumed I would have seen more of them out in the summertime if it was socially acceptable). Richard knew this, and perhaps sensing that he was opening a door too early for me, did a little creative backtracking. When I asked him why a magazine like this would exist he told me “it’s not a magazine. It’s a catalogue for, uh…invisible bathing suits.” At a time when I believed light-sabers existed in the world, this seemed a perfectly logical explanation to me. Though some genuine concern came over me. I felt a little bad for the catalogue models; didn’t they realize that if the wore these invisible bathing suits to the beach, everyone would see their boobs?

Later that night, when all had returned to normal, I was hanging out in the kitchen with my Mom. Perhaps wanting to impress her, I told her that I had hurt myself earlier that day, but managed to calm down quickly enough on my own that her usual intervention was not necessary. “How did you do that?” she asked. I didn’t think she’d ask that, but felt it unimportant enough to answer truthfully. “Richard showed me one of his catalogs of invisible bathing suits. If I were you, I wouldn’t ever buy one of those.”

Really, I just wanted to spare everyone any more embarrassment.