An Exorcise

My little revelation for the day: there is no “way it’s supposed to be.”

And, with that in mind, I’ve decided to occasionally use this space to post semi-painful stories about events from my childhood that may have scarred me for life.

Doesn’t that sound fun?

No? Well, I hope it can be at least a little interesting. And cathartic. And these aren’t deep dark secrets. Just childhood crap, most of which involves elementary school pecking orders. In elementary school, the girls badmouth each other. And then, once girls are in middle school, all those elementary school voices are so loud in your head that you can take over and start badmouthing yourself (and others, too).

I don’t remember much about kindergarten. I remember, near the beginning of the school year, our teacher suggesting that we say the alphabet together. I thought, “how dumb are these kids if they can’t do the alphabet? Shouldn’t we be past this?” I remember that my teacher always complained about the “white spots” in our coloring projects. “Go back and color more of that,” she would say. “There are white spots.” Obviously she just wanted the coloring to take more class time. But at the time I thought it was weird. I remember that the first letter we learned was M, and the sound it made, and that the picture that went with it was a girl eating an ice cream cone. Mmmm. Ice cream.

And, even in kindergarten, there was a popular set of girls. Girls who got chased the most by the boys when we played “boys chase the girls.” You wouldn’t think at the age of five that this would happen, at least I wouldn’t have, and yet I know that it did. And some college friends of mine, elementary ed majors who student-taught in kindergarten, have said that this happened in their classes.

Michelle was the popular one in our class. She was a skinny thing, with wispy hair and pointy features. If she scrunched up her face and stuck her front teeth over her bottom lip, she would’ve borne a strong resemblance to a mouse looking for cheese. I don’t know why she was popular, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that she had all the jelly bracelets she could wear. I was not one of the popular girls. I didn’t know how you became one.

Our playground had a short piece of cement tubing, the kind of thing they use for drainage in ditches, with a small hole in the top. One day, Michelle and her crowd decided to let the rest of us play with them . . . if we could pass their test.

“I’m going to crawl into the tube and put my wrist through the hole,” Michelle announced. “I’ll be holding a jelly bracelet. And if you grab a bracelet, you can can play with us.”

We gathered around anxiously. Michelle had fewer jelly bracelets that day than girls who wanted to play with her. Also, I think we would also be allowed to KEEP the jelly bracelet, so we were especially anxious. Michelle’s wrist came out through the hole, her hand holding a black jelly bracelet. Some of the other girls hesitated, because black was not a popular color. Pink, or purple, or maybe something with glitter . . . they were going to hold out. But I wasn’t. I had no pride. I wanted to play with those popular girls. My hand shot out and grabbed that black bracelet with a speed that surprised everyone, even me.

So, not only was I uncool, I was also desperate. And that has always been my problem, I think.

Not that I wasn’t popular, but that I always so desperately wanted to be.