Bras and I did not get off to a good start.

The August before eighth grade, my mom and I went bra shopping for the first time. I was fashionably late to the development party, and I saw the expedition as the potential end of my football-playing days. My mom probably saw it as a delightful mother-daughter rite of passage, but I went with a grumpy and reluctant heart.

I imagine there are girls who initiate the “it’s time to start wearing a bra” conversation with their mothers, but they are aliens in disguise and not to be trusted.

You need to know that we’d driven 45 minutes to Oneonta to shop, so there would be at least some selection. I’m fairly sure the general store in my small town didn’t sell girls’ bras, though the owners would have been too modest to display them anyway. (Each box of Tampax sold came carefully wrapped in opaque paper.) Delhi, where I went to school, would have had shops with a few utilitarian white bras in various sizes.

There I was in the fitting room, listening to bizarre instructions like, “Lean forward and shake yourself into it!” I kept trying to avoid contact with the sales lady without being rude. “Just let me tuck you into it a little bit.” Mom did her best to be my ally, “I think she prefers the ones without lace.” However, there was little she could say to cheer me up.

Because it was the world—or our small-town slice of its early 1970s culture—that I was being fitted for. We were all growing into adults, finding our place in a world bigger than our family, school, and small town.

I think some people find their spot in life rather quickly. The place where they grew up fits them well. They might try on some other places, but they return home. The colors and fabrics of their early lives suit their later life. They feel supported, and changes they make can be done in place.

Finding your place, however, isn’t always so straightforward. Sometimes, the rules for “fitting in” are just as bizarre as the ones for a bra. Case in point: the absurd bra-fitting advice given on a classic Oprah show. Two fitters from Nordstrom joined her on set. Oprah’s first question: “How do you know if you need a bra?” Nordstrom: “If you put a pencil under your breasts and it doesn’t fall out, you need a bra.”

My brain screeched to a halt. What? What weirdo put those two nouns in the same sentence? Did some small-busted woman have to work her way through a list of alternatives? Uncooked spaghetti noodle? Too thin. Table knife? Not safe. Quarter-inch dowel? Not a common household item. I know! A pencil!

At the time, the underwire bra was the latest rage, and Nordstrom was all in, stating, bizarrely, that wire was the latest thing in comfort. Sometimes we follow advice that seems contradictory when searching for our place. Popular experts and advertising can influence us. For some, fitting in is welcome and worth a few occasional pokes.

An online store I like sells compression bras. That one is tougher for me because it suggests that being oneself means compressing another part of oneself. Yet, we all do it at times: suppressing a part of ourselves that doesn’t fit with our view of who we are.

Then there are those whose bra wardrobe is always in flux. “This feels good now.” “Nope, not anymore.” “This one, now.” “No, it’s not right at all!” “How about none? Let’s try that!”

For some, “home” is always in flux, not because no place fits, but out of curiosity about a different kind of life. “What’s life here like, or here, or here?” “Does this place offer a good blend of comfort and support? For how long?”

Maybe that’s why it’s called a training bra—because it’s a first step in learning to pay attention to what fits and suits you.