Doctor, You've Got to be Kidding! [antikvár]

CHAPTER THE Ladies9 Home Journal is a highly respected magazine. You might even say it's revered. It's the Magazine Women Believe In. I believe in it. My mother must have believed in it, too. She named me Heather Halloran, and, to the best of my recollection, I sprang full-blown from its pages at the age of six. Six is the age when I began to read it (haltingly, of course) and learned of the existence of Mr. Right and the absolute necessity of waiting for him, and not settling for anything less. When I think about it, I don't know why I was so optimistic. If you're the kind of person who looks up from a book and says, "Excuse me" when somebody opens the bathroom door by mistake, you should figure you're doomed and quickly settle for the first crew-cut feathertop that comes along. My cause was hardly furthered by the phenomenal fact that I didn't develop a bosom until I was twenty. This might have been attributable to our living in a beachy part of Los Angeles that was colloquially referred to as Pneumonia Gulch, but mine, I believe, was a record even for those parts. High school was a near-constant embarrassment to myself and everyone around me; I was too tall and too shy and most of my evenings were spent lying on my bed composing brilliant repartee for all the encounters that either never took place or never would again. To compensate for these wounds to my psyche I joined the glee club in my junior year, and instead of bleeding, I sang. My mother and the alcoholic lady next door alternately patted my hand and my back and told me I had plenty of time,