Children dream big. It is only
later that reality crushes those dreams out of existence.
When I was very small I knew what
I wanted to be: I wanted to grow up to be Ricky Nelson. So what if I was a
girl? Did it matter that I was denied the basic training for music, dance and
acting as a child? You can, I was told, grow up to be anything you want to be.
Stages never scared me. How
wonderful it is to stand on a stage and perform. It wasn’t frightening, like walking
up to a child you didn’t know and asking if you could be friends, knowing
rejection was the most likely outcome.
When you performed on a stage,
people came to see you and paid money for the privilege. They weren’t waiting
to boo you or walk away. Instead, they would applaud and smile and ask for your
autograph.
I lived a good bit of my
childhood in my head, turning the names of my brothers’ friends into characters
I could become as I played alone in the back yard or swam in the pool.
The pretend world I created was
so vivid to me that I usually forgot that any other children were not privy to
it, and when I said something related to it, they didn’t know what I was
talking about. Instead of asking, they’d look at me oddly and tell me I was
weird.
I was used to that. My brothers
called me worse things than weird, and even my own mother told me I was
strange. Repeatedly.
If I didn’t know something, my
brother would say I was stupid. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t learned it yet
because he was four years older. The fact that I didn’t know everything he did
meant I was stupid.
School was a different matter
entirely. It wasn’t everything I was promised. We learned something new and
then spent the next two weeks having it repeated eternally, so, I assumed, even
the most brick-headed student would know it.
This of course caused me to miss
the fact for years that I can’t memorize things by reading them; I memorize by
hearing things. While I think I have somewhat of a photographic memory, often
the photos don’t turn out.
Because of the slow and
repetitious nature of the classroom, added to the fact that my bad handwriting
caused me to have to write my homework over several times before my mother was
satisfied with it, my hand spent more time in the air than folded in obedient stasis
on my desk.
When called on in class, I could give the answer. It wasn’t a
matter of pride to me; hearing the same thing droned into your ears day after
day, how could you not give the answer?
Yet for all of my shrugging off
answering in class, I was hounded and what would now be called bullied for
doing well in school.
“You think you’re a big shot,”
was hurled in my direction more often than, “Hi, how are you?”
Why would I think I was a big
shot? Because I could spell? Because I got 100 on a math test? Because I could
tell which verb part to use in a sentence? Because I was almost never called on
to read, since the teacher knew I could? Because I was sent to the back of the
room for talking?
My art projects were always
failures, and I could never manage to write on the lines. Those were the
important things to me, and in those matters I was a failure.
Big shot? School felt to me like
hanging from a window sill, afraid that someone would slam the window down on
my fingers.
I tripped up the stairs. I
couldn’t cut on or color inside the lines. I didn’t know how to jump rope. I
was a slow runner, and therefore, always “it” in a game of tag.
I essentially had no friends.
Yes, I was allowed to hang around with someone for a week or two, but that was
it. That wasn’t being a big shot to me; that was total failure.
At home, there were no girls in
my neighborhood who were my age, and I was forbidden to play with boys. Most of
the girls on my block and the next were a year or two older than I was. Until
the teen years, that’s massive.
The rest were a year or two
younger. That’s also massive, but younger was easier to get along with – until
they decide they don’t want to play with you. Then you’re a big shot.
Then there was my big, empty yard
to play in, with swings, a sliding board, a tree fort and a sand box. How could
I possibly need other children?
When I was seven, there was a
five-year-old girl who liked me. She was allowed to cross the street to come to
my house to ask if I could play (when I was five, I wasn’t allowed to cross the
street alone).
My mother discouraged me from playing with her because she was
so much younger than I was, but if she came to my door and I was home, it meant
I had no one else to play with, so my mother didn’t want to be so cruel as to
forbid me from going to her house. Her name was Sheila.
Sheila would play with me for
about ten minutes, and then lose interest and go off somewhere else.
That didn’t bother me. She had a
seven-year-old brother who was in my class at school. He and I got along very
well, and he was always interested in playing some game or other with me when I
came over – in fact, I think that’s why Sheila went off somewhere else.
The other children in school
would tease that Michael was my boyfriend. He wasn’t. We were just pals. We
played cowboys or soldiers or tree climbing or whatever other things I wasn’t
allowed to play at home.
He never kissed me or tried to.
In fact, that kind of thought never crossed either of our minds. He was the one
person who didn’t mind that I could answer questions at school, who never, ever
called me a big shot.
My parents were surprised when I
was invited to Michael’s eighth birthday party. I was surprised that they let
me go, since I wasn’t allowed to play with boys. And it still rates as one of
the best birthday parties I ever attended.
I never told my parents that I
spent my time playing with Michael and not Sheila. They wouldn’t have let me go
to his house if I did.
I didn’t think of that as lying.
I could never understand how not volunteering information was lying when you
didn’t actually say anything. It might be a sin, but it wasn’t lying.
Sin was a big deal in second
grade, although now I’m not sure whether or not a seven-year-old is capable of
actual sin. I was far more afraid of my parents than God, if he existed –
although I believed he did, just in case, since I’d never actually met him – and
at the time I was a bit skeptical of whether or not people in history, like
Caesar and George Washington were real. I thought maybe they were like fairy-tales,
and teachers made them up so they’d have something to teach.
I had already learned that a
little lie that didn’t hurt anyone but kept you from being punished was
preferable to having a grownup make a big deal out of something that wasn’t
important, and hounding you about it for a year.
Like the time I went to a report
card conference with my mother when – other than art, handwriting and
orderliness – history and geography were my only two bad grades. I was in fifth
grade by then.
The teacher asked me if I liked
history and geography. That particular year, I did not. I didn’t want to hurt
her feelings by expressing hatred for something she taught, and I didn’t want
to have to hear about it every time I answered incorrectly, so I said, “I
guess.”
Now, I knew lying was wrong, but
I figured I could make up for something that small long before I had to apply
for my ticket to heaven. God wasn’t going to give me extra homework or yell at
me as my parents or teacher would, so I decided to tell the lie and do the Hail
Mary to make up for it instead.
But back to second grade, I tried
to be an accurate student.
I found my First Communion prayer
book not too long ago, with its pre-Vatican II Latin responses and pictures of
a much different-looking Mass than what people see today. I also found, tucked
in the pages, a paper with a list written in my second-grade handwriting.
It was a list of sins I’d
committed since the previous visit to Confession. I wanted to be accurate so I
wouldn’t commit an additional sin of lying to the priest in Confession by
giving an incorrect account of my failings.
I’m not sure whether or not I
brought the list with me to Confession, but it’s documentation of what I thought I was doing
wrong at the time.
Children’s understanding of
wrongdoing is amusing. I wonder if other children thought to impress the priest
by confessing to a murder or theft they hadn’t committed (I never did).
But so many of the commandments,
at least the way they used to be worded, were difficult to understand. I knew
lying was wrong, but I could never find a commandment saying that. There was
one about bears, which made no sense to me.
And my classmates didn’t
understand the word “covet”. They usually mispronounced it as “cover”. What
would be wrong with covering your neighbor’s things? What if it was raining?
Should you just leave them out there to get wet?
God had some strange rules. His
were even odder than the ones my parents had, like looking up and down before
you crossed the street. Shouldn’t you look for cars? But then, God could turn
into a wafer, so I wasn’t too surprised.
By second grade, I was pretty
good at riding my bike. The training wheels were gone and I had even learned to
ride around corners.
I still had minor accidents, like
the time I decided I was going to let go of the handlebars because I wanted to
learn to ride without holding on, as I had seen some of the older kids do. I
wasn’t sure how that was accomplished, so I decided to let go and count. As soon
as the bike got a bit wobbly, I’d grab the handlebars again. Once the bike was
steady, I’d try again.
I could ride for a fast count of
ten. My goal one day was to wait until I reached twenty. So, as I started down
my street, I let go. I reached ten.
On the next try I was almost able
to reach fifteen. Almost was close. I
let go again, determined to reach twenty. The road slanted down slightly as I
counted. I could feel the wobblies return, but determination won out, and I
didn’t grab the bars.
As the bike started to fall over,
I was only to eighteen, but I grabbed the handlebars once again, just as Jimmy,
a seventh-grade boy who lived across the street was walking past. I was too
late, and the bike went completely over, with me on the street below it. I couldn’t
seem to get myself up, and Jimmy didn’t give me a second glance.
Finally, I called out to him, and
he grudgingly, picked up my bicycle so I could stand up. As soon as I was off
the road and able to take the bike, he let it go, leaving me to my cuts and
scrapes, and went on his way.
School might be easy, but being a
second grader was definitely difficult.
