To See or Not To See; that is the question.

I was thinking about distractingly large breasts while eating lunch today.

I know what you're thinking: did you stumble onto the "letters to Penthouse" blog instead of ordinarily reserved Doctor Andy's blog? I'll try to explain how this got into my mind.

I didn't start out thinking about breasts; I started out thinking about how good the sandwich I ordered was going to taste. Peppers, salami, and vinegar and oil? Yum. I sat at a table and waited for my food, reading the KC alternative paper.

The clack of heels on the tile got my attention. Since I have rehearsals and other odd time-occupiers going on today, I was eating lunch at about 4:00pm. At that time, any eating establishment is usually empty, and today was no exception. The prevailing silence commanded that I look up to notice who had broken it. The "who" was a young woman, dressed in high-heeled snow boots (is there such a thing?). She was (and I don't use this description wantonly) top-heavy. In looking at her, there was no way to avoid noticing that she had large and out-of-proportion breasts.

So, why did I notice and pay attention? Probably for the same reason I would have if she were abnormally short. Or freakishly tall. Or had a gigantic nose. Or very small eyes. Things that are outside of the "normal" experience are notable. I use normal in quotes because I'm not trying to say that there is anything correct about the norm, only that what is normal is often most common. In this case, women with extremely large breasts would be normal and expected at the Skin Club or other such establishments, but not so much working at a no-tips food outlet.

She seemed to be an employee, since she strode behind the counter and got straight to work restocking cups, filling the chip displays, checking the ice tea levels, and all the other things that I loved employees to do when they came to work with me. She is an efficient employee, on good terms with the rest of the staff, and takes it upon herself to use idle time to clean. A model worker.

I was sitting at a table perpendicular to the counter, and I couldn't see the employees at the registers. I did have an excellent view of the customers, standing in profile as they ordered. The woman was also running the front-of-house register, so all new orders had to go through her. What was most interesting was watching the people ordering, and how they reacted to the obvious sight of her.

Two woman who entered smiled nicely, but their faces fell as they walked off to find a table. Their expressions were scornful as they whispered and laughed. Three men came in; two made valiant efforts not to look at the counter at all while ordering. The third stared shamelessly until the other guys bumped into him (on purpose). Must be sort of the ogling equivalent of telling someone off for staring at a solar eclipse too long: bad for the eyes, and all that.

Me watching them react to her is a variation on a "game" I enjoy. An offshoot of people watching, it's always entertaining to walk seven or eight paces behind a very beautiful woman. From that point, you can catch the unguarded reaction of people walking opposite your direction, after they have passed out the subject's view. I say "unguarded" because some people let their guard down to an absurd degree once they think they're safe from being noticed.

A friend has been known to engage in a similar activity if he's walking next to his wife. He prefers sunglasses, so he can see (and inwardly chuckle) at men who look at his wife as they walk. This makes me slightly uneasy, as I'm not sure I'd want to know how much other men eye my attractive wife, but to each their own.

The subject of a completely different post would be whether or not the woman at the restaurant was aware of the attention, and if she cultivated it on purpose. A business that does most of the traffic at lunch time would seem to be a strange place for her to be trying to catch attention in the late afternoon. Her attire certainly emphasized her figure, but I could see it also being presented only as "looking nice for work."

What was surprising (what with me being a man, and all) was I noticed her being such a conscientious worker. And what took me completely off guard was how that was her most memorable and noticeable quality.