Wednesday, October 3, 2007

More Dissertation Avoidance

I have yet to read the book "No One Cares What You Had For Lunch" by Maggie over at Mighty Girl, but I've enjoyed reading her posts based on its prompts.

In a bid to procrastinate some more, I'm taking her prompt from page 49 (or so she and others say).

Making My Timeline

My First Decade + one year to make a prime number

Age 1: I am small for my age and my mother worries that I will be very short.

Age 2: My sister enters the world. 'nuff said.

Age 3: I memorize my favorite book, Sleeping Beauty, including when to turn the pages. My parents have a dinner party and a friend's 5-year-old daughter runs out of my room and proclaims in astonishment to everyone, "She knows how to read!"

Age 4: I want my mom to cut up an apple for me for a snack. She tells me to wait because she is trying to finish something. I keep asking. Finally, she tells me to stop asking for an apple or I would not get one at all. I return a minute later and ask for "that green thing on the counter."

Age 5: I learn to hate wearing dresses because Ryan S. keeps chasing me and trying to flip up my skirt. My mom never understood why I didn't like dresses after that.

Age 6: In first grade, my teacher does a shadow profile portrait of each kid in the class. I am offended that Dolly's profile portrait includes the outline of her eyelashes whereas mine did not. I wonder why my eyelashes are so short.

Age 7: I really want a Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas. My parents don't have a lot of money--especially considering those dolls were something like $40 in mid-1980s money--so my mom makes me one by buying a head (that looked very similar to the real ones, btw) and sewing the body. I bring it to school, get made fun of, and abandon the doll at home, which means I played with it for maybe 2 weeks. Years later, I realize I had no comprehension of the amount of time, energy, and love my mom put into the project because she wanted to give me the best she and dad could, and how much it must have hurt to have that effort be so unappreciated.

Age 8: I am bored in my 3rd grade class, so I switch teachers. I help out the kids in my new class and a number of them tell me I should be a teacher when I grow up. And I got a perm. One of those kinky 1980s poodle mistakes.

Age 9: A boy named Jacob tells me in line outside of the classroom that I have "a fat butt and skinny arms." When playing dodge ball, I somehow end up the last kid in and all the boys throw the balls as hard as possible to hit me. I run to my teacher crying. I also start getting pimples. Goodbye self esteem!

Age 10: We come home from Christmas at grandma's house to find two feet of snow. I run to the backyard and see my sister's cat Cloudy dragging her entire hindquarters on the ground behind her. She was run over by a car while we were gone. She gets put to sleep at the vet's office. This is my first experience with the death of someone(? thing?) close to me. I realize that life is unfair.

Age 11: I learn to play basketball on my 6th grade team and have the best coach ever (Mr. Zeisler!). We had an "awards ceremony" at the end of the season, where he gave each of us a nickname. Because I was 5'6" at the age of 11 and therefore almost 4 inches taller than most everyone else in my year, my nickname was "The Tower."

2 comments:

Rebecca M said...

Poor Cloudy!

I don't think I remember anything from the first three years of my life. At least not worth blogging about...I may try though!

This was an enjoyable read! Your age 9 sounds like my age 11.

Deetie said...

I must admit that the early ones are anecdotal stories. I have flashes of memory back to about 6 months of age (bizarre, eh?) but nothing really concrete until about age 4.

I think I'm going to add an "Age 11" since my 10 is so depressing. Besides, prime numbers are better anyway.