So obviously it's a perfect time to post on my blog.
I've been meaning to post this story for awhile because I feel like it's relate-able in a weird way to everyone's childhood. The things you don't realize when you're a kid and sometimes carry into your adulthood.
Let me just explain...
Two months I ago I learned that Helen Hunt, does not, in fact, have three breasts. This is a somewhat stunning revelation to have had as a young women in my early twenties, but I kid you not I did not question this idea until November of 2013.
If you don't remember, Helen Hunt is that actress from films like Twister, Pay it Forward, and Cast Away
You know, Helen Hunt.
In any case, for a great part of my life I held this strange belief and it was only rectified when in November I was perusing YouTube and saw and advertisement for her starring in a indie film. Immediately when I saw she was in the film I wondered to myself "I wonder what happened to her third boob?"
So I took to Google like the good little millennial I am, and searched for "Helen Hunt + Third Breast".
Nothing.
I tried the same search with different wordings.
Some other stuff came up but it was definitely not what I was looking for.
So I thought hard about where I had heard this. It only took a few seconds before I realized I had been holding this idea about Helen Hunt under some pretty ridiculous circumstances.
If we rewind to probably sometime around 2001 I was about 9 years old and completely unlearned in discerning credible news sources.
As child of this age I was also subject to frequent grocery store trips with my mom. Mom was no rookie grocery shopper and bought a ton of food in each grocery trip to plan for our family meals. As such, we always had to spend a long time checking out and the 20 items or less aisle was practically a foreign territory to me.
It was in these times standing in line that I would look, predictably, at the magazines in the aisle. And if you remember anything about the late 90's and early 2000's in grocery stores, you will remember one magazine frequenting those shelves; at least in central North Carolina.
The National Enquirer.
This was (might still be, I have no idea) a celebrity smearing magazine that also sometimes includes articles about recent supernatural events like alien sightings, or ancient curses ruining mid-western american housewives linen. It's just like, a ridiculous magazine and no one took it seriously.
But as a nine year old, I had no idea about this! This magazine was sitting next to actual newspapers and magazines like 17, and Vogue. How was I supposed to know that this joke of a magazine had no real credibility? If you really think about it, the National Enquirer seems like a name for a totally legitimate newspaper or magazine.
So I one day while I was waiting in that long line I looked at the cover, I even remember what it looked like. In the upper right portion of the magazine's banner, in black and white, I saw Helen Hunt in a photo with what clearly looked like three evenly sized breasts in her tank top, next to writing in bold letters that probably said something like " SCANDAL! Helen Hunt discovered with three breasts!"
I don't know the circumstances of why she did have them, but in my mind this made sense. I remember actually thinking
"Oh right, she hasn't been in anything since Castaway. Probably because she's embarrassed that everyone knows about that extra breast now. Totally makes sense."
And while I later was able to learn that the National Enquirer is not actually a reliable magazine, I never rectified this small fact of Helen Hunt's chest situation in my head.
So this resulted in mine holding of this idea of her since 2001. Literally every time someone mentioned Helen Hunt, which was not often enough for me to question, I wondered about her chest.
SINCE 2001! THAT IS MORE THAN TEN YEARS AGO!
Now that I work with kids, and study them a lot I realize how easily children will believe things. They are just so inherently trusting and that is beautiful while hilarious. Children mimic what adults do, believe what adults tell them, and do what adults tell them. These things they learn are carried into their entire lives, contribute to what kind of adult that child will turn into Isn't that terrifying? Now knowing this I feel an intense responsibility to be a somewhat decent adult. I want to be the kind of person that can be so understanding of that time and hopefully spur something good within these little adults.
I think a lot of people forget what it's like to a be a child and I honestly get so upset about that.
When I see a child "acting up" in a grocery store or restaurant or whatever, and then I see other people being judgmental with their stares and whispered, I'm infuriated.
These little humans are in people training and it takes so much learning to be a proper, contributing adult. They are learning.
There are people in their 30's and older who still haven't grasped it, who need to learn, and so much of it depends on childhood.
So I really feel lucky to have left childhood still believing that Helen Hunt had extra gifts when other kids left with learning so much worse untruths.
And I remember what was like, to scrape my knees and still keep playing dangerously, to believe that kisses stopped pain on all my cuts and bruises.
This is why over a year ago I was so easily taken when a friend told me that when he was a little kid he used to pretend to be a business man with a briefcase and go out to his little battery powered kid car, WHICH EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WAS JEALOUS OF, and sit in the driveway in it pretending to be stuck in traffic.
Like instead of driving around in it.
I knew we would get along swimmingly. Just because I knew he remembered what it was like.
I might post again in the future. Love to all.
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