The Air Up Here

I'm a fairly tall individual. I'm a hair under six foot four inches...although, with my hair growing longer now and piling up on my head, I might be at six foot four even.

Being tall has many, many perks. Among them, there's being struck by lightning, being the first to get shat upon by birds, and the ever-present danger of your forehead meeting low lintels of doorways and poorly-hung ceiling decorations. Lamps, those fouls beasts, are the bane of my frontal bone's existence.


There are some actual advantages to being tall. The ability to peer down shirts is one of them.

And it's something I've been taking advantage of since the sixth grade.

A conversation I had with my best friend, the Brewing Optometrist, some time around the 11th grade:

Me: Dude, I think I just saw Rebecca Scanlan's belly button.

TBO: So?

Me: From above.

TBO: Bastard!

And so it was during my formative years and on into college. Spy some cleavage and grab an extra peek. I've enjoyed the view of many a curved, round breast in my day, peering down into the dark crevices hidden by her shirt. What a glorious thing it is to be tall.

Except...there was this one time, when I was a senior in high school. I was friends with one of the finest specimens of femininity there ever was to grace the halls of Huntington North High School. Her name was Jodi Hippensteel and she had tits as big as planetoids. It was as if the gravity of her shirt had captured a pair of asteroids and their combined gravity was enough to hold them there, jiggling back and forth wherever she went. Back in the day, I'm sure if you would have looked up "huge and perky" in the dictionary, there would have been a picture of Jodi Hippensteel, circa 1993.

You'd need a life vest to motorboat those babies. Unfortunately, she did not have a ripe, round apple of an ass to go with Emmet Otter's Jug Band in her shirt. This allowed me to focus all my attention where it needed to be.

I also just learned, thanks to the marvels of the internets, that Jodi was living in South Bend at the same time I was at Notre Dame. Universe, I'm trying not to hate you right now.

Have I digressed? Probably, but it was a happy place. Mostly.

Anyway, Jodi and I were pretty good friends. Perhaps not the finest of friends; certainly I was never invited over to spend the night at her house, painting her toenails (dammit), but we were friends.

One day, in physics class, my friend Jodi was wearing this ridiculously tight red-and-white checked shirt. It probably best fit her in the second grade, but no one was complaining. Least of all me, and my two friends sitting next to me in physics: the Brewing Optometrist and this guy named Chris.

For whatever reason--the blood, she wasn't pooling in my brain at the time--Jodi came over to ask me a question about something. In the physics lab, we sat at tables that were tall enough we required stools. Conveniently, they were just tall enough for someone of Jodi's height to be able to comfortably put her elbows on the table and lean forward--way forward--and rest her chin on her hands with her elbows splayed wide.

Which she did.

Right in front of me.

And this is when I underwent the greatest internal conflict, ever.

The more basal, blog-writing part of me appeared on my left shoulder, screaming in my ear "Look at 'em! LOOK. AT. 'EM! You're never going to get a better chance. Never! Look at 'em! LOOKAT'EM!"

On my right shoulder, the better part of me--clothed in white, strumming a harp, wings aflutter--was saying "Maintain eye-contact. Maintain eye-contact. Don't look down. I'll do it for you. DAMN!!!"

Like the fucking saint that I was am, I did not look. Not even a peek. Though, I'm sure she could see the internal conflict playing out on my face. Do I regret not looking? Not so much. She had several hot friends that I felt I had outside chances with, so I could always play the "I'm a nice guy card" while trying to get into their pants.

However, the Brewing Optometrist and Chris both got presented one of the finest titty-oriented shows ever. Not only am I nice guy for not looking down Jodi's shirt, but I'm also a caring and giving friend, because that conversation lasted for about five minutes. Five, long, agonizing minutes. And the giggles from those two bastards sitting next to me were growing louder and louder as my desire to look down grew stronger and stronger.

Fortunately, I was saved by the teacher entering the room and starting class. Jodi bounced back over to her seat, but rather than pay a damn lick of attention to whatever the hell the teacher was blathering on about--force vectors, speed of light, momentum, some bullshit--I sat there and stared at the sweet round curve of Jodi's breasts. Sideboob is excellent, even when clad in red-and-white checkers.

And that appreciation of mammaric flesh has served me much better to this day than any force of friction calculation ever has.