Her skin was flawless, her hair styled perfefectly, and she was developing breasts.  I envied Teresas's physical perfection a was jealous of the admiring glances she received from the boys at a school.  I, on the other hand, was five-feet-nine inches tall, weighed 105 pounds, and had the figure of an 8 year-old-girl.

Teresa enjoyed teasing me. At least once a day, she would say, "You will never get a boyfriend. Boys only like girls with breasts."

Her cruel comments hurt me deeply but I knew she was right. Without breasts, my chances of ever having a boyfriend were nonexistent. The rule was simple, no breasts, no boyfriend.

Daddy never missed an opportunity to point out my flat chest. Often, while entertaining his friends in the kitchen, he would lift up my blouse and proclaim, "Look, my daughter does not have any breasts."

The room would explode with laughter and, humiliated, I would run from the room and hide in my bedroom for the rest of the day.

Hoping to improve my low self-esteem, Mom bought me a padded bra. I added tissue paper to give myself the appearance of a fuller chest. Nancy, Teresa's best friend, knew how self-conscious I was about my appearance, She took great joy in humiliating me publicly. One day, she walked up to me in the lunchroom and, in a loud voice asked, "Does anyone have a Kleenex?"

She then stuck her hand down the front of my blouse, pulled out a tissue, and waved it over her head. The entire room erupted in laughter. Mortified, I ran out of the room and hid in the bathroom until after school ended and I was certain no one was around. 

Nancy was mean and heartless, and I hated her with a passion.

Teresa's obsession with her breasts infuriated me. She always found a way to draw attention to them. She would say, "Oops, my breasts are so big my button keeps popping open." Or, "My breasts are so big all the boys stare at me", or, "I have to be careful not to bend over because all the boys try to look down my blouse."

Daddy's constant ridicule, Teresa's bravado, and Nancy's cruelty were intolerable and unavoidable. They were constant reminders of my physical inadequacies. Even when I finally started to develop breasts, they were incredibly small and drew even more ridicule than when I had no breasts.