Lets talk about the importance of social skills

I think I will organize my stories by category. We all know what the first category will be, its a crowd pleaser with almost any audience. Thats right, I'm talking weird childhood behaviors and public humiliations!

So without further adieu,

*trumpets*

WEIRD CHILDHOOD BEHAVIORS AND PUBLIC HUMILIATIONS!-Pt 1: Elementary

The importance of public appearance becomes violently clear as we emerge from the innocence of kindergarten, into the horrible miasma of telling time and learning what construction workers do. We are fully coming online. Once you can tell time, your innocence is lost forever. Forever. You start to become aware of, not just others, but what others must think! You learn things such as, eating your food in a weird/gross way can mean certain lunchtime mockery and possible multi-child chanting. So you try not to be so gross, although some kids just own it.

You begin carefully crafting your image. Oh boy do some of us girls have a predicament. You want to be cute and adorable, but you also want to beat up boys and look tough. But beware, for dabbling in too many personalities can end in disaster. The setting: the jungle gym. The kind of jumgle gym that probably has some sort of profound mathematical significance, but mostly its just the kind where you hang upside down and make monkey sounds. It had rained. There were giant mud puddles everywhere. I was wearing my most beautiful white bejeweled sweatshirt and matching white stretch pants with lacy cuffs. I took a brake from playing monkey to particpate in a contest that was going on to see who could jump over this particular largish mud puddle. Pff. No problem. Peice of cake. The thing was like 2 foot in diameter. I was agile like a monkey. I shoved my way to the front and leaped with all my might. Unfortunately power is not all that matters in muddy terrain. We need traction people, traction. My left foot slipped back violently. I was facedown in the muck. I rose like swampthing, letting out a roar of agony and ran like the wind, the shreiking laughter of the boys fading behind me. They wouldn't let me go home so I had the pleasure of wearing the smelly unclaimed lost and found clothes that came out of a cardboard box in the nurses office.

So that was my first lesson in the dangers of pride and ego. If you get too up on your high horse, you end up in wrinkled ninja turtle t-shirts from the nurses office that smell faintly of pee. kid pee. Now every person struggles with ego, but perhaps more people struggle with their front, their image. I'm talking about shaving your butt to fit in with a group of baboons. They are vicious animals, friend.

There are three types of actions in the realm of trying to fit in. There are actions which no one buys, and you are called out publicly, which usually ends up in you crying and writing in your journal. Then there are those which actually work, those idiots, and you get a foot in the door. My personal favorites, are the types of actions which you THINK you get away with, but are so preposterous that no one would have believed it, and they probably all had a good laugh at you. Children are especially good at this one.

Some examples:

After striking out with the cool kids, the weird kids, and even the fat kids in the year of 1992l, there was one clique left that might offer assylum. The girls who wore glasses. I wasn't going to let my 20/20 vision exclude me from a potential friend group,so I sneaked into my older sister's room and swiped her old pair of glasses. Oh man these were great, they would probably cover half of my face now, I cant imagine what they looked like on an 8 year old. I'm pretty sure they were from the "Justice Ruth Ginsburg's Designer Eyeglass Collection by Lenscrafters" So the next day at recess, I put them on and stumble onto the playground, groping my way toward what looked to be my potential targets.

Me: "Hi guys, guess what? My mom said I needed glasses, so now I can be part of your club."

Glasses Girl Club: "Really?"

Me: "Yep, what are we going to play"

*at this point it becomes apparent that I cant see jack shit with those huge peices of plexiglass over my eyes*

Glasses Girls Club: "YOU DONT WEAR GLASSES!! LOSER!"

Wow kids are mean.

That same year, second grade was rough, I had the pleasure of sitting next to the prettiest most awesome cool girl in school, Whitney White. She had the COOLEST retainer. It was purple and had glitter in the plastic. Everyday she brought it to school and set the little case on her desk for storage during lunchtime and snacks. I didn't have crooked teeth but what I DID have was a problem with night terrors, bed wetting and rabid teeth grinding. Not as cool, but when the dentist gave me my very own mouth guard, the first thing I noticed was that it came in a box just like Whitney White's!! What perhaps escaped my attention was that it was a gigantic translucent peice of plastic that looked something like what a boxer wears, and I was unable to effectively communicate while wearing it. BUT nonetheless I took it to school, and began wearing it, setting MY little case right next to hers. My teacher called me to her desk. She asked if I really needed to wear that all the time. With a flurry of spittle I calmly explained that "yesth I'm schuposhed to wear it or elsch I gesh in shrubble!" God I wonder what she was thinking. She probably felt sorry for me, although on second thought, probably not since she later gave me the only recorded sentence of detention for a second grader, and publicly blamed me for breaking her leg (indirectly by giving her the flu?)

Oh to be young again.