I remember my childhood as a series of foreign images… the scruffy mustard seed yellow chair I knelt behind in hiding when my mothers voice trilled in angry echos through the house following after my brothers and what new mischeif they had caused. The rays of light cast from the bike spoke window of the mildew speckled plywood fort the neighborhood boys had built. The rotting stench of the swampy pond down the hill behind our home that had sucked up dozens of toys. Standing on the top rung of the scortching metal slide feeling fearless and brave as the sun reflected into my eyes. Digging in the monster truck tire sand boxes determined to find a buried treasure. Achieving the perfect mud to water ratio for the most pleasing textured mud pie. Brice Semples too white hair and painfully shrill voice of authority. Standing in the room of my neighbor Jaquelyn the Model pretending to know what Def Leppard meant.
One time in fifth grade my teacher called me into the hall and explained that another student was in the room next door and wanted to speak with me privately. The student was someone I’d never been close friends with and it still seems strange to me now to think she would ask for me. When I went into the room I could tell she had been crying. She looked distressed. I asked her what was going on and she proceeded to reveal the details of her father leaving the famliy that morning. I can’t remember my exact reaction the that moment. I know I tried to comfort her. Perhaps I even hugged her. She asked me not to tell anyone and I didn’t. The point is this…. I think it was around that time in 5th grade that I started to lose a part of me that I’ve never been able to get back. It was the part that was inherently sweet and kind. The shy quiet me that probably never spoke a word out of turn and took most anything said directly to heart and cried about it too. The part that would make a girl ask for my ear because she felt she could trust me without out ever being BFF.
In fifth grade I started my ascent, which never went very high, into the world of coolness. It was the year of boy girl parties. Hanging out with people who hung out with sixth graders and wearing dangling hoop earrings. In fifth grade I gained a minor bit of fame for taking a boy smaller than me and flipping him over my back in a rage because he had called me a name. It was also the year my friends and I made another girl cry because she wasn’t invited to our pool party at the end of the year.
It wasn’t until seventh grade that I came to understand competition, using boyfriends and how not to cry openly. I mastered sarcasm and cynicsm. I created a shell to avoid letting someone get to my emotions before I got to theirs. I don’t know that it worked, but the nicer gentler Kristy slowly disapeared. I have tried over the years to harness her every so often, but I find myself mindlessly putting up barriers, talking without thinking because I am afraid of judgement, and criticising when praise could just as easily come from my mouth.
I think what made me think of this is my friend Josie. I thought about how she lets me talk about myself and I hardly ask her how she is doing. She is so good at listening and reflecting. I value our interactions, but right now I feel afriad that I am not taking good care of the people around me who are so dear to me. Sigh.
Leave a Reply