Memoir: Part Two

So here's the next bit I've got on the ol' memoir. I figure I should throw in a little disclaimer, especially since I didn't ask for anyone's permission to use their names and all.... So this is all true, to the best of my knowledge. The thing is, though, that I obviously had to reinvent a lot of the details to hopefully make it interesting to read. The dialogue, for example, is recreated to the best of my ability.  Also, my recollection is admittedly biased, warped, and probably completely incorrect at times. Be that as it may, this memoir is a vivid account of my childhood, as I remember it. So there's that! Thanks for reading. Gee, it sure is nice of you.

By fourth grade, that simplicity had diminished, as had the size of our group, and it all started when a newly mature Kayla Bergeron strutted onto the playground, wearing the uniform jumper and a smear of gloss across her lips. Years prior, Kayla had come to N.D.I.C., a simple, squinty-eyed girl with mousy brown hair and a sweet, simpering giggle. Come fourth grade, though, and Kayla’s innocent demeanor melted away like sidewalk chalk in the rain. It happened as if overnight—one day, jump rope songs and flapping arms dominated the playground politics of my fourth grade female classmates, and the next, shaved legs and glittered eyelids took the blacktop by force. Kayla was the master of ceremonies, the ringleader of the sudden maturation of fifteen some-odd girls, who, in her wake, trashed their Lisa-Frank folders in exchange for those bearing the ultimate starlet, Britney Spears.

By the week following Kayla’s transformation, it seemed that nearly every girl had started wearing the uniform jumper—a choice which was once considered downright ludicrous—to show off their newly-smooth calves. I, myself, stuck to my pleated uniform pants. Not that I didn’t try on the jumper. It didn’t look nearly as good on me; it made me look like a baby shrouded in a plaid tablecloth.

Kayla shook my fourth grade class into a whole new phase of life. The boys, once concerned mostly with football and teasing Justin Laliberte for his stutter, became suddenly interested in their female counterparts. They tumbled over each other, tongues waggling in the fever of love, all vying for Kayla’s hand. Following Kayla’s example, the girls of my class began wearing sports bras, leaning forward in their seats so the outline of their bra could be seen through the back of their polo shirts. I myself purchased a sports bra, and I wore it every day, just to make sure everyone knew I was growing up. I wasn’t though. Underneath the useless strip of cloth, I looked the same as I always had. “You might be better off using two Band-Aids instead of a sports bra,” my mother joked as we perused the training bra section of J.C. Penney.

Recess had changed completely, too. Now, the playground-walkers far outnumbered the playground-players, boys excluded. I played Baby Birdies with a couple of devotees who had not yet adopted Kayla Bergeron’s ways. Alyssa Fondakowski, Katie Biegner, and Marie were sometimes my only birdies. Alyssa hadn’t bought a sports bra yet, and she always had to turn around when we changed for gym. It was hard not to stare at her bare back, hard not to feel her shame emanating from her hunched shoulders and bowed head as she frantically shuffled into her tee shirt. I felt my insides plummet as I heard the popular girls whispering and giggling, furthering Alyssa’s shame. I knew the feeling. I had experienced it earlier that year when I had mistakenly worn my “Arthur” underwear on gym day. Trapped in the relentless hell of the locker room, I stood shame-facedly as Kayla and her nameless cronies bored holes into me with their eyes. They pointed and guffawed as I scrambled into my wind pants, and repeated, “DW?” to each other in incredulous tones, as if sporting the sassy female cartoon aardvark on my undergarments were some sort of sin.

In fifth grade, I fell even farther behind my maturing classmates. I still did not have even a bump to hide behind my sports bra. I was still too short for the MindEraser, and I had yet to exceed 55 lbs. I refused to give up Baby Birdies, and was only good at being friends with boys, not at flirting with them. I watched Kayla obsessively, hoping to adopt her ways, her flip of the hair, her confident swagger. I wore lip gloss and eye shadow and decorated my binders with pictures of Aaron Carter. But when I got home, I would wake up my dolls and cradle them against me, assuring them, “Mommy’s home, now.” I would curl up on the couch and watch “PB & J Otter” and “Franklin” and, of course, “Arthur,” sucking my thumb all the while. I still loved to watch “Rugrats,” but it scared me that I no longer could relate to the brave, loyal, unshakable Tommy. Instead, I saw myself more in poor Chucky, the asthmatic worry-wart with the famous cautionary line: “I dunno, you guys….”

Luckily, that same year, I found a place where I could escape, even while I was at school. That year, I became a reader. I had always loved to read. My mother and I had read together every night for as long as I could remember, laughing together at Junie B. Jones and her endless antics, and sighing at the beauty of Lily’s adventures in Rockaway Beach in Lily’s Crossing. But in fifth grade, reading became an independent venture. My rampant imagination found a new home, nestled within the bindings of countless books, and I voraciously devoured any book I could find. I raced through Roald Dahl’s whimsical tales, was captivated by the Great Illustrated Classics. I poured obsessively over The Westing Game and Holes, staying up far too late, and greedily sucking up the words by the faint light of my closet. And, of course, there was Harry Potter. Harry Potter would become one of my most loyal friends over the remaining years of my adolescence, and his spell-binding tale would leave me forever awaiting my Hogwarts letter, awaiting acceptance into his magical world. 

Around the same time that I became obsessed with reading, I also discovered that I liked to write. I wrote frequently as a child; my parents have folders full of poems written in my youth, poems about God and solitude and the solemn beauty of night, all written in a childish, misspelled scrawl. In fifth grade, though, I was encouraged in a way I never had been before. In fifth grade, my teacher made me feel exceptional.

Mrs. Andrulis was one of the toughest teachers in the school. She was known for her impenetrable stare, and for her yearly debunking of the Santa Claus myth. Her curriculum was rigorous, her grading unforgiving, and her rules of conduct vigorously upheld. I remember those things about Mrs. Andrulis, but more so, I remember her kind smile, her patient voice which never faltered, even when Megan misread our religion book and said aloud, “Life begins with constipation,” instead of “conception.”

It was Mrs. Andrulis’ kind, even voice which read my words aloud in front of my classmates for the first time, citing my assignments as “good examples.”  She would read many of my assignments aloud that year, and even encouraged me to enter multiple contests. Mrs. Andrulis never revealed my name, which I was grateful for, but each time I heard my thoughts read aloud, the blood roared in my ears and my face appeared to have been boiled, it had grown so red. I was embarrassed and unnerved, but filled with such unbounded joy I felt I might suddenly take flight. I had made something great, and, best of all, it was easy! Words seemed to blossom from the tip of my pencil, taking shape on paper with hardly any thought at all. 

That year, I felt a stirring of the old bravery and confidence of my youth—I felt my inner Tommy Pickles emerge. I may be flat-chested, I thought, and I may be short and scrawny, and I may even still suck my thumb, but I can do something, and I can do it well. With the introduction of words into my life, both in creating words and in reading the words of others, I found a new way to soar, a new way to challenge the world, a new way to spread the colorful plumes of my imagination, and take flight.