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You remember correctly. It was very important to me, in my conception of Kitty, that she be utterly NORMAL. Nothing at all exceptional about her, until the super powers showed up.

At the risk of revealing something that the idiot squad will race to misunderstand, my inspiration for Kitty was, in no small part, a gal pal from my Art College days. This was a young woman with a Playmate of the Month body, and, once, she had told me the "equipment" arrived rather suddenly, when she was in her middle teens, and it completely changed how people, male and female, perceived her. (She'd even had to dump a long standing nickname. As a redhead, she was known for most of her life as "Rusty." That quickly became "Busty.")

The idea that one's life could be turned upside down by physical transformations over which one had no control was something I found quite fascinating. I cruised fairly smoothly thru adolescence, without growth spurts or an out-of-control voice. I wanted to explore this concept, and Kitty was my way of doing it, with "phasing" substituting for visible physical changes.

Of course, as you note, Chris demolished this right away, using a scene plotted for one purpose for an entirely different purpose. Kitty became a "genius," no no longer ordinary.*

Kitty was supposed to stay forever in her middle teens, too. God, I was SO young!!!!!

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* As a general rule of thumb, when you read those old X-MEN issues, pay attention to how the story is being told. If it's amn even mix of words and pictures, you're seeing what Chris and I plotted, and what I intended. If it's all in the words, Chris has veered off course. The most egregious example, of course, being what was supposed to be Scott musing on his changing relationship with Jean turning into a feminist diatribe from Ororo -- and in three or four panels forever branding Scott a "jerk."