By eighth grade, Jamie, safely tucked into plaid shirts and dark jeans, already looked like a frumpy suburbamom. Her body appeared to have slid directly from pre-pubescence into middle-aged dump, completely bypassing any charms of mid-development. The Dorothy Hamill haircut, extraordinarily plain face, and obsession with horses didn't help her cause, either.

Her concession to girlishness was her sneeze, a cartoonish little apology that never failed to make the more jaded of us 12-year-olds roll our eyes. The giggle that followed in its wake was pure overkill. Still, many found it delightful.

I shudder to imagine her evolution into orgasm.