LJ Idol Break Topic: New Year.
To this day, I don’t know why I chose Wisconsin.
We were on the bus coming back or going to some kind of field trip. It’s funny, because I don’t remember the field trip, and I don’t remember who I was sitting with, but I remember the piece of dingy looseleaf paper ruled in pink and blue lines, and the blue ballpoint pen that should have been contraband: we were only allowed pencils.
This was it. This was a sign that I was actually accepted, actually making friends. Another little girl had invited me to play that game that elicited secret giggles and yelps of horror from cafeteria tables and the back of classrooms.
She drew a square in the center of the looseleaf.
She wrote four letters:
M
A
S
H
Giggling, hand curled around the paper like a shield, she filled in the rest. I remember the hand, but I don’t remember the girl.
I closed my eyes while she pulled her pen in a spiral around the center of the square, until I said,
“STOP!”
And then I opened my eyes as she counted the outer rings and started crossing things off.
“You’re not going to marry Matt.”
A little disappointing. I sort of liked Matt. He was one of the boys who didn’t seem to spend all his time coming up with new ways to torment me.
Three years later, in the sixth grade, Matt moved away without a word. No one seemed to know he was moving; his family just left town without warning.
“You’re going to have seven kids!”
At the time, seven kids sounded exciting. Now, my womb moans in complaint.
Tick, tick tick: she crossed off the options until only one remained in each category.
This was my future: neat and certain until the next time we took a field trip, as certain as it was that if I worked the pop-top of a Coke can back and forth while reciting the alphabet, I would marry a boy whose name began with the same letter I was saying when the pop top finally broke off.
Later that year, my teacher gave us an assignment: Write about what our lives would be like in 25 years.
--Would we be married?
--Would we have children?
--Would we have a job? If so, what?
--Where would we live?
--Would we live in a house? An apartment?
It felt, as I wrote out my sentences, as if I were playing MASH again. A more sophisticated, more detailed version of MASH.
In my future, the future I wrote for myself when I was eight, I would be married and have four children: three girls and one boy. I liked girls better than boys. Everyone knew girls were better than boys, but I felt like it was only fair to throw in one boy. Two of the girls would be twins: my oldest children. Then a boy, then a girl.
We had to draw pictures to illustrate our lives. I drew a purple house that looked suspiciously like the Chelsea Manor dollhouse kit I had been pestering my parents to buy: a Victorian house with a tower.
I wrote that this house, this purple Victorian house, would be in Wisconsin. I would live in Wisconsin, writing and illustrating children’s books. I would be the proud recipient of a Caldecott Medal.
I drew myself stylish, in a big sweatshirt with a miniskirt and a side ponytail. It was the eighties, after all: this was the height of fashion. I drew my husband to look suspiciously like the boy I had a crush on, the boy I would play Carmen Sandiego with in the school library, maneuvering my arm so that our forearms would just brush now and then.
I drew the two twin girls: they would be eight, like I was now, because I would have them when I was twenty-five, just like my mother and father had me.
But since I was eight, and didn’t like to draw boys, I lost interest before I got around to drawing the other kids in my future family. I added something to my essay about my lemon yellow convertible.
In Wisconsin.
That future, that far-off future of 1986, twenty-five years away, would be in 2011. That was an impossibly long time away: three times my entire lifespan, plus a year. It seemed so far off at it might be extending toward infinity.
In 2011.
I don’t know if eight-year-old me would be disappointed that I am not married, have no children, and still feel very much like a little kid and not that stylish and sophisticated grown-up I drew in my childish prognostications. I am pretty sure that eight-year-old me would be disappointed by the lack of a Caldecott Medal, a purple Victorian house (apart from the Chelsea Manor, which I did eventually get), or a lemon yellow convertible. Eight-year-old me would definitely be disappointed that I don't wear my hair in the height of awesomeness that is a side ponytail.
I’m still not sure about Wisconsin.
At least now I can say I've been there. Does that count, eight-year-old me?
Note: these are not the actual drawings but new ones in which I did my very best to recreate my eight-year old drawing style, handwriting and spelling. They do replicate the original ones as best as I can remember.
We were on the bus coming back or going to some kind of field trip. It’s funny, because I don’t remember the field trip, and I don’t remember who I was sitting with, but I remember the piece of dingy looseleaf paper ruled in pink and blue lines, and the blue ballpoint pen that should have been contraband: we were only allowed pencils.
This was it. This was a sign that I was actually accepted, actually making friends. Another little girl had invited me to play that game that elicited secret giggles and yelps of horror from cafeteria tables and the back of classrooms.
She drew a square in the center of the looseleaf.
She wrote four letters:
M
A
S
H
Giggling, hand curled around the paper like a shield, she filled in the rest. I remember the hand, but I don’t remember the girl.
I closed my eyes while she pulled her pen in a spiral around the center of the square, until I said,
“STOP!”
And then I opened my eyes as she counted the outer rings and started crossing things off.
“You’re not going to marry Matt.”
A little disappointing. I sort of liked Matt. He was one of the boys who didn’t seem to spend all his time coming up with new ways to torment me.
Three years later, in the sixth grade, Matt moved away without a word. No one seemed to know he was moving; his family just left town without warning.
“You’re going to have seven kids!”
At the time, seven kids sounded exciting. Now, my womb moans in complaint.
Tick, tick tick: she crossed off the options until only one remained in each category.
This was my future: neat and certain until the next time we took a field trip, as certain as it was that if I worked the pop-top of a Coke can back and forth while reciting the alphabet, I would marry a boy whose name began with the same letter I was saying when the pop top finally broke off.
Later that year, my teacher gave us an assignment: Write about what our lives would be like in 25 years.
--Would we be married?
--Would we have children?
--Would we have a job? If so, what?
--Where would we live?
--Would we live in a house? An apartment?
It felt, as I wrote out my sentences, as if I were playing MASH again. A more sophisticated, more detailed version of MASH.
In my future, the future I wrote for myself when I was eight, I would be married and have four children: three girls and one boy. I liked girls better than boys. Everyone knew girls were better than boys, but I felt like it was only fair to throw in one boy. Two of the girls would be twins: my oldest children. Then a boy, then a girl.
We had to draw pictures to illustrate our lives. I drew a purple house that looked suspiciously like the Chelsea Manor dollhouse kit I had been pestering my parents to buy: a Victorian house with a tower.
I wrote that this house, this purple Victorian house, would be in Wisconsin. I would live in Wisconsin, writing and illustrating children’s books. I would be the proud recipient of a Caldecott Medal.
I drew myself stylish, in a big sweatshirt with a miniskirt and a side ponytail. It was the eighties, after all: this was the height of fashion. I drew my husband to look suspiciously like the boy I had a crush on, the boy I would play Carmen Sandiego with in the school library, maneuvering my arm so that our forearms would just brush now and then.
I drew the two twin girls: they would be eight, like I was now, because I would have them when I was twenty-five, just like my mother and father had me.
But since I was eight, and didn’t like to draw boys, I lost interest before I got around to drawing the other kids in my future family. I added something to my essay about my lemon yellow convertible.
In Wisconsin.
That future, that far-off future of 1986, twenty-five years away, would be in 2011. That was an impossibly long time away: three times my entire lifespan, plus a year. It seemed so far off at it might be extending toward infinity.
In 2011.
I don’t know if eight-year-old me would be disappointed that I am not married, have no children, and still feel very much like a little kid and not that stylish and sophisticated grown-up I drew in my childish prognostications. I am pretty sure that eight-year-old me would be disappointed by the lack of a Caldecott Medal, a purple Victorian house (apart from the Chelsea Manor, which I did eventually get), or a lemon yellow convertible. Eight-year-old me would definitely be disappointed that I don't wear my hair in the height of awesomeness that is a side ponytail.
I’m still not sure about Wisconsin.
At least now I can say I've been there. Does that count, eight-year-old me?
Note: these are not the actual drawings but new ones in which I did my very best to recreate my eight-year old drawing style, handwriting and spelling. They do replicate the original ones as best as I can remember.