The Horror of BMHG's, and the Missing O

tall girls
Originally uploaded by Lyubov.

When we all hit middle school, there were certain girls that were clearly taller than certain boys. We all soldiered on with the comforting thought that the boys would be late bloomers, but everything would even out. As time wore on, it became clear that our mothers had been giving out false comfort. We were tall girls, and some of those boys were always going to be speaking to our training bras.

We each dealt with this in our own way. Some girls hunched their shoulders to try and be smaller, somehow. Other girls figured out that there was no shame in being tall, and kept their shoulders back, and their heads high.

As we moved into high school, I noticed a disturbing trend. The tall girls who hunched their shoulders seemed suspended in this junior high stage of being boy crazy. I watched in horror as they twittered and simpered their way down the hallways, as if they were the mice from Cinderella come to life. Six foot tall Valkyries, mincing down the hallways, giggling and chittering like fifth graders at the first boy-girl party. As their boyfriends rounded the bases, they became the most horrifyingly vocal aggressors. They stalked their crushes like prey, and everything was drama. UGH. I became hyper aware of my own actions, and went to great lengths to avoid being seen as a BMHG. They were the Big, Maaaaan Hungry Girls.

One of the BMHG's rode the bus with me, and had a locker next to me. We were each slowly removing the Duran Duran pins from our jackets one by one, working our way towards adulthood. But Michelle had the most God-Awful habit of bringing her romance novels to school. I could not have been more horrified. I read my mom's trashy novels, and they were FABULOUS. But I'd sooner be caught dead than be seen reading one. I used to snatch them out of her locker and read the backs out loud in my most dramatic voice, trying to get her to "cool up" a bit and leave them at home. Even years later, when I ran my own bookstore, and read every cheap smut novel printed, I never read them in public.

I read cheap historical romance novels.

I'm outing myself. I can tear through a typical romance novel in about three hours--If Little O is bugging me. They are usually over quicker than that. (One of the reasons I love Sci-Fi is that it takes me a lot longer to read because the concepts are so different.) The impetus of this whole post was that this weekend, I read a phrase that stopped me cold.

"Tiny stars burst behind her eyes and the taste of honey rose on her tongue."

I have to admit that I did not come to the marriage bed in a pure, virginal state. Ahem. This isn't one of those blogs, so let's just say that I don't feel like I've missed out on life. Tiny stars? Yeah, I've been there. But the taste of honey? There is a whole new crop of BMHG's coming up, and they are going to be bitter, indeed, when they fail to taste the honey.