To tell you how all this began would be quite simple. To explain how my world was created. We all know how a child is born, but now I’m taking things way too technically. How all of this began, this entire book, this story that seems like a teenage girl being melodramatic, when in reality, she sees everyone else to be melodramatic. But all this began with a simple attraction, the simple boy meets girl, or reversed. I met this boy in approximately third grade from what I remember. I still adamantly believed in the cootie disease and wasn’t much of– well, much of anything for a seven year old –but mostly, I wasn’t a people person. Of people, I was terrified.
I was small, the normal height for any third grader. My once long blonde hair was now shorter and turning brown with age. I had almost no freckles on my face, a few on my arms though. And while other kids were focused on playing games and finding their birthmarks, I was in a corner, humming loudly to myself and gripping the only birthmark I knew I had. It was a large brown spot on the top of my wrist, and it would have looked like someone spilled coffee on my wrist. It intrigued me; I would ask myself questions I could never answer. They were questions like, how did it get there? Why do I have it? Why is it in that spot? Is that the color my skin could have been? Or was it just me believing in magical realms beyond the fireplace? I never knew.
It was not hard to predict where I may be or what I was doing. I would sit or stand in a corner or away from the other kids. I was humming and staring at my wrist or at the other kids. I was predictable. I found noises annoying and people who were mean to me were stupid and automatic enemies. But that sounds like every third grader I’ve met. To be a “normal” kid and to be a “weird” kid was like the age difference of 2 to 17. They were “normal”, they played a laughed and talked, they did normal things. I was “weird”; I was quiet and kept to myself. I was “weird” because I threatened people with safety scissors.
I knew then that people were afraid of me as I know now; it’s almost been my life long advantage. I could threaten moms with safety scissors and still be able to use my blue crayon; I could threaten kids with glue in their hair during nap time for their ABC blocks. I could even threaten the teacher to not send me to the office. Now, many of my tricks worked, I was a devious and frugal child who fed off attention as many kids in kindergarten did, but most of my tricks left me punished. This punishment was always dished out in equal parts by a) the teacher and b) the principal. To say that I had nothing up my sleeve for them too would leave you quite mistaken. See, I could get in and out of every situation, a ninja if you would, a five year old ninja.
After one particularly exciting day of painting, I decided that the meager five year old slaves beneath me needed to be punished and worked to the bone. So I took the meter stick (which was then used as a pointer), grabbed a chair and placed it selectively in the middle of the passage way to where the blocks were and where they had to play. Each time a kid passed my fateful blockade, they were whacked on the head. Kids began to cry and uproar began but those meager kids were nothing compared to my greatness and power known as a chair and meter stick. The teacher, a forty year old woman with white blond hair rushed out to the crying and screaming of her students to yell at me only to get herself whacked on the head. Nevertheless, the principal was called to haul me away like a tyrant to their execution to where I was promptly sat in a chair next to the secretary and told to, “stay”.
Another one of my passions has always been to disobey adults’ rules, an anarchist if you will. So being told to “stay” was revolting to my glorious five year old tyrant presence. I simply disobeyed and rolled underneath the secretary’s desk while she was out of the room. She came back, yelled at me that this wasn’t funny and then sat back at her desk assuming the principal would deal with me soon. As she filed papers mindlessly and uselessly, I tied her shoes together and when I was satisfied, bit her in the leg. After which, I bolted from the room as she stood, screamed and fell over. Once back in my classroom, all the flames of my tyranny gone, the teacher asked me what punishment the principal gave me, to which I responded, “Oh, he just said not to do it again,” and then sat in my chair as if nothing had happened.
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