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kookaburra
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once upon a time:
there was a tiny baby. and everybody said she was beautiful.
she had big pretty eyes, but they were always solemn, because she was always awake, staring at everything. from the time she was born she didn't sleep much, instead she looked around, to figure everything out. she had very pinchable cheeks with big dimples, and she had a big warm smile, when she did smile. she was good at doing things with her hands, like when she unscrewed the windex bottle. however, she had no common sense, as she dumped the windex all over herself and stared at her parents accusingly, asking with her eyes why they let her do that.
she didn't like to crawl though. she crawled very rarely, for she was waiting until she had the strength to walk well. and the only problem that she had was that she was a bit cholicey at the beginning.
once upon a time:
there was a little girl. and everybody said she was special.
the adults around her told her that she was smart, because she picked things up so quickly. and she read long chapter books at the age of six. and she had read so many books that her vocabulary was amazing, and she spelled very well.
she was very shy around many people, but with her family she was wild and crazy and opinionated and funny and perceptive. she knew what she wanted, even though it was sometimes pretty strange, like when she only wanted to ride home on the letter streets. and she never hesitated to speak her mind, except that sometimes she thought that she shouldn't speak with as big words as she wanted to. and sometimes her grandmother told her that she didn't have god-given common sense, and although she knew that she wasn't really lacking, she never wanted to hear words that made her feel bad again. and the only problem that she had was that she was beginning to to have to limit her speech to talk to her friends or talk in front of the class.
once upon a time:
there was an almost preteen. and everybody said she was smart.
she could write very well, she got tests 100% correct without studying, and she got along with her teachers. she had a great group of friends, esp. in the 4th grade, when she had four very close friends. and she was one of the teacher's favorite students, and one day the teacher took her aside right before her birthday and told her think hard on this birthday, because this was mostly likely the last time that a new digit would be added to her age. and she tried to think hard about it, but she forgot and went to play with her friends. the same teacher also told her that thinking created new pathways in the brain and made her smarter. and that was when she realized that she thoght more than the rest of the kids her age, and she wondered what the other kids did with their time. it was around this time that she started to notice boys, and started to want them to notice her. and she vaguely noticed that some other girls got more attention from the boys, and she had heard someboys talk about how the girls looked in certain places. and this is when she looked at her face and finally noticed the absence of pinchable cheeks and considered gaining weight. and this was when one of her best friends got a boyfriend, but she didn't get jealous at all because she didn't like that boy and she was pretty sure that the boy she liked liked her. and she was the best in her class at ballet, and also the best at tap, and sometimes she purposely messes up because she doesn't like to get too much attention in class. and the only problem that she had was that she imagined a crush that wasn't there and told somebody and the secret got out.
once upon a time:
there was a preteen, and everybody said she was nice.
that was what people liked to put on her valentine's day cards when the teachers forced them to make them for the whole class. either that or that she was smart, but Evan got more of those now. and schoolwork stopped taking precedence and moved over to allow boys to step in. and she desperately wished that she had the body that the boys liked because she wanted someone to like her even if she didn't like them back. and this was when she hated her friend, for being *much* prettier than her, and having all of the boys like her. and this is when she wasn't always the smartest girl in her class all of the time, and this is when she was in a different class from her two of her best friends and when she saw them at aftercare they were always talking about their specific class so instead she did her homework. and this was when she went to a lockin at her school and one of her best friends and two other boys played spin the bottle, but they didn't have a bottle so they played "spin the gameboy" but it didn't spin, and they ended up just kissing each other on the cheek. and the preteen's mother was sleeping almost right beside and her mother asked her later if anything had happened and the girl said of course not and blatantly manipulated her mother. and somebody had seen the little game of spin the gameboy, and they told other people, and soon there were rumors spreading around, making everything seem much worse than it was, and finally her teacher confronted them about it and it was the preteen who cried this time, even though she was the one who never cried for anything. and this was the time when her friends told her to stop only critiquing the spelling and grammar mistakes of the stories that they showed her and they told her that being sarcastic all of the time hurt them, and the preteen had never guessed. and this was when she wasn't quite as good at ballet anymore, and although she wasn't the worst she wished for those times when she had been the best because that was how she thought of herself. and this was the time when her school was over and her best friends were all switching schools. and her best friends came together and promised that they would stay in touch. and the only problem that she had was that she had was that she was moving to a private school where she knew nobody at all.
once upon a time:
there was a (just-barely) teen, and everybody said she was fast.
she was on the cross country team, and then the track team, and she was setting school records. and when they posted that she had broken records people came up to her and congratulated her and told her she was fast and she didn't like it because she was obsessively modest and she tried to downplay what she did so that nobody would feel threatened. she was also smart, she got straight a's almost every quarter of the year, and she felt so left out when her friends talked about screwing up grades and messing up tests that sometimes she would purposely mess up an answer or two just to avoid seeming too perfect. and she started to feel the need to hang out with black people because otherwise she was too white, even though deep inside, she knew that she was probably fighting a losing battle. and a couple of boys liked her, but she couldn't overtly go after one boy because he was white, and she didn't go after another boy because she didn't think that he was black enough for them to be accepted together. and she forgot about one boy because he was the twin of the boy she liked, and he wasn't as popular as his twin, and she had to nerve to feel guilty only after she avoided his eyes and snuck a quick peek to find a sorrowful face. and she had a most embarrassing moment, and the a boy on her cross-country team who had liked her now made fun of her for it all of the time. and in ballet she wasn't the best at anything, and it was distressing because she slipping away, but at least she could blame it on cross-country and track. snd she and she talked to her her old best friends semi often, about how their new schools were doing. and she got an award for the highest verbal and second highest combined sat score for her area.
once upon a time:
there was a teen, and everybody said she was quiet.
at least, that was what her worst enemy said, when they were on the bus going somewhere, track practice probably. and the teen stared out of the window deliberately not forcing herself to make conversation with her enemy, although that was what she was supposed to do since her enemy was more popular than her. and she stared at her sad reflection and wondered when this had happened. maybe it was when she first came back to school, and realized that all of the friends that she had so painstakingly made had fogotten her, or maybe it was when she realized although justin seemed to like her in the geometry room, he was never going to go out with her. or maybe it was when she heard justin say that she wasnt the "complete package". or maybe it was when she realized that she wasn't going to be a ballet prodigy, or when her grades started falling, or when she got so stressed out, or when she didn't get any awards at all for her sat scores. and the teen was skinny and wasn't pretty enough to be liked, and she couldn't write as well as she used to be able to. and she sometimes felt worthless and she sometimes thought of suicide and other dark thoughts about the world. and sometimes she would make an effort to call her friends, but there was nothing to talk about and they would lapse into silence. and sometimes she couldn't think because there was so much stress and when she was thinking about all of the things that she had to do, and all of the things that she had ever done wrong, and all of the things things that could go wrong, her brain would seem to stutter and it was no wonder that she couldn't finish her homework when nearly every night she had a mental panic attack. and at the end of the year justin didn't quietly confess his love for her and neither did anybody else, and she never got a chance to show everyone that she really could sing if she wasn't scared, and she never got to show people how black she was, or her southern accent, or how fun she could be. she just left and they were gone. it was rather anticlimatic compared to all of the fantasies she had. and yet she would miss them anyways. and her only problem was that everything was crashing down.
once upon a time:
there was 14-year-old, and she doesn't yet know what everyone says about her.
she doesn't know how well she will do at ballet, and she doesnt know how well she'll do at school, and she doesn't know if she'll have friends, or if the boys will like her. and she doesn't know if her best friends from her old school will ever find out something to talk about. but she knows now that she isnt some sort of skinny freak, because she has seen black girls just as flat as she is. and she knows that if she tries hard she can get good grades, and she knows that the regret for not doing something often lasts longer than the regret for saying something wrong. and she knows that at least some days, she looks at herself and smiles.
even though she writes too much, and not that well,
even though she is paranoid about what others think,
even though she isn't as exceptional as she used to be,
sometimes she surprises herself, and finds little glimpses of the baby and the little girl and the preteen and the (just-barely) teen, and the teen.
sometimes she lets herself believe that she is still beautiful, special, smart, nice, fast and quiet, and that she doesn't have to be just be one trait.
sometimes she still thinks that she has the potential to be anything.
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040706
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