Last November I wrote the beginning (15000 words) of my story. The story I'm talking about was my personal story, with a few minor details changed of course to make it semi-autobiographical and I never did finish it. I may pick up one day where I left off- but I think as I live each day the story continues to write itself. So the time will come eventually when committing those words to paper will be a necessary thing.
Not that my story is grand. Or influential. Or even that interesting. In fact it was quite mundane. However it was fraught with humour as I look back upon it, even the tenderest moments or most vulnerable events that occurred in my life can be seen in the current light of humour. If we cannot look back with humility and humour upon our own journey then what exactly have we learned?
I'm framing up my story from a third person perspective now, not just for the sake of my actual story, but for my own personal growth. I will take what has happened to me in previous years and do my damnedest to improve, grow, learn, and stretch as a human being.
Here is an excerpt from that story, and remember; any likeness to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Yes, in story telling there are coincidences!
It had to have been a Monday.
The day of my highest high and my lowest low.
It was likely around 1976. Yeah, it must have been. Kindergarten. Circle time. I was seated hands on lap on my regular green triangle. Mark was sitting on his red square, immediately to my left.
“Shhhh, children,” whispers Mrs.Winslowe, raising a slender pointy red index fingernail to her lips. Her Farrah Fawcett hair parted perfectly down the middle. “Let’s get through this book and then we’ll have snack.” Behind her the letters of the alphabet printed neatly on an India-ink coloured black board with stark white chalk. Each morning I stared at the capital C while we did our opening exercises. I’m always drawn to the first letter of my first name. Like it is some sacred hieroglyph that only I can decipher. A crackly 45 rpm version Bad Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce was the main attraction over the fat square loudspeaker as we did jumping jacks and then recited faithfully the Lord’s Prayer. This was before anyone was Jewish, Muslim, or Jehovah’s Witness. Yes, I’m pretty sure the whole world was Christian. At least in 1976 you would have thought so.
Her elongated hands turned each page skilfully, Mrs. Winslowe lingering on the bigger words so we’d comprehend. I gazed up at the masterful illustrations, each rich with light and shadow and the most incredible poetic detail. As usual I was lost in another world; I had become the lead character in a book again. It was pure escapism for me, even at such a young age. I often pretended I was someone other than who I actually was. (Who I actually was didn’t seem that daring, or that much fun. Or that pretty. Yes even at age five, I felt un-pretty. Funny, I look back at photos today of my five year old self then and I was just the sweetest thing. The photos do not show the self-loathing. What a good little actress I was.)
Then it happened.
Clear out of the blue.
My fragile heart skipped a few lonely beats.
I looked down and could not believe what I saw.
Then I looked up and couldn’t believe what I saw.
Mark’s hand on my knee.
Mark was smiling ear to ear, all crinkly “dinner plate-eyes” perched over freckled cheeks, gazing at me.
My stomach looped. Jumped. Leaped!
LOVE!!
Is this love?!
Yes!!! It is! LOVE!!!
For a good five minutes worth of eternity I stared at that hand on my knee. You couldn’t have sandblasted the smile from my face.
For the remainder of story time and well into snack, Mark never left my side. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, we held hands for a nano-second. My nemesis Pattie, with her jet black pixie cut and her funky bell-bottoms glared at me arms crossed from over the sand table. (This was my first experience of being cut with another’s eye. She cut me with her eye! I was hurt! But too in love to care. I let it slide. Nothing was getting me down that day.)
Soon it was time for home. Clean up time. Time to sit and reflect upon our day before we were dismissed.
Mrs. Winslowe stood up straightening her brown skirt flat with her hands and then extending those long fingernails (that I envied oh so much being an avid nail biter myself) in a pointing motion towards the coat rack said, “Children. As you file out today you will notice I have placed in each of your backpacks the chocolate bars you ordered for the fundraiser. Please PLEASE wait until you get home and see your parents before opening them. You must take them home to your parents first.”
What? Wait! This too? Chocolate and love in one day? If I’m lucky I can go for a hat-trick and maybe persuade my mother to make my favourite dinner tonight too. All that dancing to Jim Croce and head bent in prayer, ‘Make me pretty, make me pretty, make me...’ has finally paid off! This my friends- would be a day of miracles!
Love-struck I made my way all Buster Browns and plaid dress to the coat room. The other kids did as I did, each reaching into their backpacks and pulling out the desired prize, a thick bar of chocolate that was almost as big as our own heads.
Except wait a damned minute.
There surely must be some mistake! I frantically glanced up at the other kids, each holding and rubbing their bars of chocolate rather admirably, as though they had just been given Academy Awards or brand new Jack Russell puppies, and my eyes darted rapidly back down into my own bag, hands grasping, groping, feeling for nothing. Empty. Nothing in my bag. Not. A. Thing.
This dawns on arch-nemesis Pattie rather quickly, as she has seemed super keen to assess my happiness levels all day long since she cut me down with her eye earlier in the day. Smirk. She was undeniably smirking. She was loving this. Oh boy was she loving this. I see her whispering with a smile to her fickle friend stood beside her.
My big browns welled up.
Squeaky voiced I stood beckoning (probably far too quietly) to Mrs.Winslowe with fat rolly tears travelling down my olive cheeks. She didn’t seem to notice me. Nothing unusual about that. When I finally did get her attention she approached me with caution, as though she were a sapper about to disarm a rather unpredictable charge on a bomb that could go off at any given moment.
“Cate I meant to tell you this but you got to your backpack before I could,” she sheepishly explains, those long fingers wrapped around both of my shaking scrawny shoulders. Looking me steadily in the eye she tries to rationalize that “since the order was short shipped by one bar...that she had to decide who was grown up enough to understand...that she had faith in me to wait until next Monday when the delivery would arrive....” I had heard enough. I was hysterical. Quietly so of course, as was my nature. I wasn’t about to hit the floor limbs rampaging and screaming. My hysterical consisted of my soul shrivelling up into a tiny black irretrievable ball of poop that some stray and mangy dog just walked up to and sniffed its nose at right before marking his territory on it.
Yes, you have likely surmised that I didn’t take it well.
But wonders never cease. In the playground I told my mother what happened. And lo, the skies parted with rays of sunshiny goodness and a miracle of sorts occurred right then and there. My mother went to bat for me. {She did love to give a good old fashioned ass-kicking and taking names kind of thing.} It was a shame that my most favourite teacher in the entire world ever was the target. Granted she had been my only teacher up to that point but my favourite none-the-less. So I was happy-sad.
The juxtapositions of my day set me up for a lifetime of highs and lows. Joys and sorrows. Bitterness and revenge."
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