Titty Wonder Boy
Photo by Kindel Media
Brother had three tits.
Two were on his skinny, white chest where they were supposed to be, but in the summertime, when he took off his t-shirt and turned sideways, he had a third, a witch’s tit, right smack below his armpit.
"It's just a dumb birthmark," Brother insisted.
Sure looked like a tit to me.
It was an crowded afternoon at the public swimming pool on Airport Drive. The shallow end felt hotter than bathwater, and the chlorine seared my eyeballs.
I spotted Brother in line at the low diving board. He and a group of unruly boys took turns cannonballing the teenage girls who preened on the edge of the deep end like mermaids.
"You call that a splash?" yelled the girl wearing the blue swim cap. "My grandma could do better than that!” She reached into the pool, cupped her hands, and splashed her hot pink chest.
Next in line was a bald skinny kid. He walked to the edge of the diving board and just stood there. Everyone stared at him.
"Show us whatcha got, little man," said the white swim cap. She cinched the ties lower on her yellow bikini bottoms and winked at him. That boy's face lit up like the fourth of July. He suddenly stood attention, saluted, and jumped into the pool straight like a pencil without a splash.
For what happened next, the lifeguard should have been paying attention. He was too busy gawking at the teenage girls like the rest of the boys.
The skinny kid took too long dog-paddling out of the way. Meanwhile, Brother launched, high off the diving board, tucked into a ball, dropping out of the sky like an atomic bomb. That poor kid didn't know what hit him.
"What the hell was that?" said Blue swim cap.
Both boys crawled out of the deep end and limped back in line.
The more the girls teased the boys, the longer the line grew at the diving board. Best of all, watching Brother make a fool out of himself was satisfying.
"See that boy in the red swim trunks?" I asked, pointing at Brother. Anita and Susan stopped treading water and stood on the pool bottom. "I know a secret about him, but you can't tell anyone," I whispered, drawing them in. "That boy in the red swim trunks has three tits."
Anita looked puzzled and scrunched her nose.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"He's got an extra nipple under his armpit. Look, you can see it; it's right there," I pointed out.
Intrigued by such an anomaly, my flat-chested friends swam to the deep end for a better look.
"Isn't that your brother?" Susan asked.
"Yeah, he's adopted," I replied.
"Aren't you adopted, too?
"Yeah, but that's beside the point," I said. Knowing we weren't blood-related made it easier to poke fun at Brother without feeling bad about it. Besides, I was still mad from earlier when he knuckle-punched me in the arm for no reason, and Mom said I started it.
"You're right," Anita said. "From here, it kinda looks like one."
We swam to the ladder in the deep end for a closer look. Because of my sore arm and a captive audience, I couldn't help but say what came to mind next.
"What if my brother's name was Tony," I said. "Then you could call him Three Tit Tony!"
I threw my head back and laughed like a machine gun.
Susan looked surprised at me, probably because I'd said the T-word so loud. But then she pinched her nose and plunged underwater to muffle her laughter. Bubbles tickled my legs.
Anita got the giggles, swallowed pool water, and almost threw up.
The more they laughed, the more I kept going. I named Brother everything from Timmy Three Tits to Triple Nipples. But when Anita and Susan joined in with names of their own, it wasn’t fun anymore.
Brother cannonballed off the diving board, but this time it was perfection. A tidal wave drenched the teenage girls. They screamed and ran for the bathroom as the lifeguard blew his whistle and told them to walk.
It was okay for me to poke fun at Brother. But I didn't like how I felt when other people did it. Brother had a hard enough time fitting in without me making it worse. I stopped calling him Titty Wonder Boy, at least not to his face.
