When I was eight years old, my family picked up and moved from Quincy, IL to Springfield, IL. Now Springfield is by no means “the big city” but it is, in fact, much larger than Quincy. In Quincy, my parents were the Co-Presidents of the PTA. In Quincy, my mother was a Brownie Troop leader. In Quincy, my father was like the most popular guy in town. (I might be little biased, but not much!) In Quincy, everybody knew me, loved me and just assumed that I was beginning an awkward stage. In our new town, who would know that I had been an adorable baby and a super-smart kindergartner of nearly normal proportion? Who would know that my hair used to be long and beautiful before the a bad “perm incident”? Who would know that in Quincy's third grade hierarchy, I had earned my way to first dibs on the swings? Nobody, that’s who! But we moved anyway and my parents did their best to make it an adventure for us. We got to pick out new bedroom furniture and choose the paint color for our room (Yes, they did make us share a room even though there was a perfectly good EMPTY room across the hall! Don’t even get me started on that…). My father even promised me a kitten if I “came along quietly”.
So there we were, Dani and me, strangers in a new town, in a new neighborhood (actually it was a subdivision and you know how cliquey they can be), in the middle of the school year, thinking WTF? But we tried to fit in, we enrolled in gymnastics (Naturally my sister excelled and I, well… I sweated a lot. Not actually from the gymnastics, though, from trying to squeeze my fat ass into the leotard). We rode our bikes around the neighborhood. And our parents became active at our school. Should’ve worked magic, right? Well in a way it did.
I remember my first few days at Laketown Elementary School. My teacher didn’t favor me the way I had grown accustomed (I had gotten 100% on every Spelling test for the whole year, so of course I was a favorite!). The building was weird (None of the classrooms had doors and they all had ½ walls. You could see into every room from the hallway). And there were hardly any other brown faces (and none in my class)! But I tried, I really did. Nobody really talked to me but a boy named “Seth”. He wore “the big shoe” because one of his legs was shorter than the other and a very noticeable colostomy bag, but he was nice to me. He helped me catch up in Math and I helped him study for Spelling Tests. My old school hadn’t been handicap accessible; therefore Seth was my first physically disabled friend, (Calm down, it was the ‘70s. Some people were still running around screaming, “Look at the Cripple!”) but my parents had raised me to be accepting of everyone. And I was. I mean, I DID notice the smell that misted around “Seth” and I could plainly see that he would often let his colostomy bag fill until you thought it would burst (he DID know how to empty it). But who was I to judge, I was just the chubby, frizzy haired, new 3rd grade girl in a B-cup bra.
And then it happened, Lanie Honeyman, the coolest, prettiest girl in the third grade spoke to me. And a few days later, we were having conversations. She lived in my neighborhood. She lived with her mom and two sisters. And she seemed to know everything. (Seriously, she was almost as smart as Judy Blume). I was so excited that I had finally begun to make more friends, it wasn’t as if I didn’t like the TWO friends I had (“Seth" and Mr. Hale the janitor) but now that the popular kids were speaking to me maybe I could add to my less than hectic social schedule. Lanie and her friends said that I could sit at her lunch table and I began to salivate like a Pavlovian dog (1. this was my ticket to the in-crowd and 2. because it was Grilled Cheese and French Fry day). I couldn’t wait!!! However, when lunch came “Seth” refused to go to their table. I begged and I pleaded but he claimed that they didn’t like him. He said that, until I came along, he had no friends. I was touched that my friendship had meant so much to him. I had never been that important to anybody. I thought about it though, it had to have been hard for a boy with his “problems” to make friends. Yet, he had so bravely reached out to me and helped ME fit in. He was something truly special… Which is why I felt so bad about looking at him and saying, “Well, bye then” and going to sit with Lanie.
So there we were, Dani and me, strangers in a new town, in a new neighborhood (actually it was a subdivision and you know how cliquey they can be), in the middle of the school year, thinking WTF? But we tried to fit in, we enrolled in gymnastics (Naturally my sister excelled and I, well… I sweated a lot. Not actually from the gymnastics, though, from trying to squeeze my fat ass into the leotard). We rode our bikes around the neighborhood. And our parents became active at our school. Should’ve worked magic, right? Well in a way it did.
I remember my first few days at Laketown Elementary School. My teacher didn’t favor me the way I had grown accustomed (I had gotten 100% on every Spelling test for the whole year, so of course I was a favorite!). The building was weird (None of the classrooms had doors and they all had ½ walls. You could see into every room from the hallway). And there were hardly any other brown faces (and none in my class)! But I tried, I really did. Nobody really talked to me but a boy named “Seth”. He wore “the big shoe” because one of his legs was shorter than the other and a very noticeable colostomy bag, but he was nice to me. He helped me catch up in Math and I helped him study for Spelling Tests. My old school hadn’t been handicap accessible; therefore Seth was my first physically disabled friend, (Calm down, it was the ‘70s. Some people were still running around screaming, “Look at the Cripple!”) but my parents had raised me to be accepting of everyone. And I was. I mean, I DID notice the smell that misted around “Seth” and I could plainly see that he would often let his colostomy bag fill until you thought it would burst (he DID know how to empty it). But who was I to judge, I was just the chubby, frizzy haired, new 3rd grade girl in a B-cup bra.
And then it happened, Lanie Honeyman, the coolest, prettiest girl in the third grade spoke to me. And a few days later, we were having conversations. She lived in my neighborhood. She lived with her mom and two sisters. And she seemed to know everything. (Seriously, she was almost as smart as Judy Blume). I was so excited that I had finally begun to make more friends, it wasn’t as if I didn’t like the TWO friends I had (“Seth" and Mr. Hale the janitor) but now that the popular kids were speaking to me maybe I could add to my less than hectic social schedule. Lanie and her friends said that I could sit at her lunch table and I began to salivate like a Pavlovian dog (1. this was my ticket to the in-crowd and 2. because it was Grilled Cheese and French Fry day). I couldn’t wait!!! However, when lunch came “Seth” refused to go to their table. I begged and I pleaded but he claimed that they didn’t like him. He said that, until I came along, he had no friends. I was touched that my friendship had meant so much to him. I had never been that important to anybody. I thought about it though, it had to have been hard for a boy with his “problems” to make friends. Yet, he had so bravely reached out to me and helped ME fit in. He was something truly special… Which is why I felt so bad about looking at him and saying, “Well, bye then” and going to sit with Lanie.
I have regretted that moment since it happened (maybe not at first but as I matured I realized how wrong I had been). “Seth” and I really didn’t speak after that. Until I ran into him one day after school, we were in High School by that time and for some odd reason he was coming out of the boys’ bathroom with a mop. I was nervous but I gathered my strength and approached him and hesitantly said, “Hi Seth. I don’t know if you remember but in the third grade, I ditched you in the lunchroom to sit with some other people. I have always felt real bad about that and I am truly sooooo sorry.” He looked at me in disbelief. He probably had forgotten all about it. I had spent so many hours worrying for nothing! I hadn’t scarred him! I had done NO permanent damage at all! I could finally forgive myself for that horrid choice I made.
"Seth" looked at me intently and said, “FUCK YOU BITCH!”
and then he just limped away.
After that I didn’t really regret my choosing Lanie anymore.
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