My Biography

~ The Beginning ~

I was born in January. That makes me an Aquarius. From birth, you could have easily applied general Aquarius traits to me.
"Those with the sign of the Aquarius are humanitarian, philanthropic and keenly interested in making the world a better place. Along those lines, they'd like to make the world work better, which is why they focus much of their energy on our social institutions and how they work (or don't work). Aquarians are visionaries, progressive souls who love to spend time thinking about how things can be better."
I’m the epitome of that, especially considering I was born on January 30th, twenty days from where Aquarius begins, and nineteen days from where it ends.
I’ve been told that I didn’t cry when I was born. I suckled happily for about five minutes until the doctors insisted I be taken away for shots. My mother told them not to give me a bottle, and they assured her that they wouldn’t. A nurse said to my parents that we were the only normal people there. I suppose the other Buffalo families consisted of single moms, teenagers, drug addicts, divorced couples and other such unhappy situations. I was born normal, perfect.
But we’re all doomed to be ruined sooner or later. For me, I was ruined the moment they took me from my mother’s arms, stuck needles in me and shoved a bottle in my mouth. They spoiled me! Taught me with their actions that food could be given from the bite of a nipple, without the effort of sucking. My due hatred of doctors had begun, and I didn’t even know it yet.
When they brought me back, Mom could no longer convince me to suckle. I was only interested in biting, and so I did. My mother describes another ill fortune that happened on my very first birthday. She says:
"The bubble of love that your father had wrapped around me went..." She makes a sound that I can only write as "chooop!" and moves her arms from one side of her body to the other rather rapidly. "And then it was around you and there was nothing I could do about it."
I don’t feel guilty about this, just a little annoyed with my Dad for being obsessive. It just happened to be that when I was born, I was the obsession. I suppose that’s where I get my obsessive phases from. As a child they were not easy to control.
The earliest memory I have, I can no longer remember. I remember remembering it. I remember describing it as being close to a wall that was orange and there being familiar voices around. My Mom told me when I relayed this to her at nine or ten or so that she doesn’t know when that could have been. There are no orange rooms in our house.
The earliest memory I can remember now would be in day care. I was four. Some kid didn’t believe I was really four, and I didn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t believe what I had to say. I also remember one of the other children calling me "corny" and I didn’t understand how a person could be corn. Corn is a yellow food item, is it not? I remember that the carpet was blue, and that I once took a toy home with me, not seeing why I couldn’t do so. It was my toy, wasn’t it?
I remember sitting in the gym room in preschool, but that’s about all I remember from that. Just the wooden floor, and some sort of wagon that I was sitting in or on. I remember one image from being in Futures, in kindergarten. I was left behind in the lunch room because I didn’t know my class number. Each class had a number, and when it was called, you got up and left with your class. Apparently, no one explained to me that I even had a class, because I wasn’t sitting with mine, and didn’t even notice them leave. I remember crying when the room was empty, and an adult scolding me and not believing that I didn’t know my class number. My dislike of outside authority had begun.
My Mom will tell a story from around that age where I was trick-or-treating with Richard and David, the two children of Susan, a friend of my Mom. I was about four. We had walked between two and four blocks and I was complaining about being tired and wanting to go home. Candy wasn’t motivation enough for a four-year-old to trick-or-treat. The doctors proclaimed that this wasn’t out of the ordinary. My response to that now is eat shit.
They also said that I just had a rash when I had rheumatic fever, and sent me home. Four days into it, they finally saw me with my 103 fever. I took penicillin before my teeth grew in. This resulted in my adult teeth growing in yellow. I was accused of bad hygiene from first grade and up, before I even realized my teeth were yellow. This probably had something to do with my obsession with mustard at that age. I would tend to get it on everything. Especially white shirts.
Half way through kindergarten my Dad decided I should be switched to Olmstead, and my Mom went along with it. Olmstead was supposedly a really good school. My memories include walking through the front door, alone, washed in a sea of students being totally lost. My mother was assured there would be someone there to find me, someone expecting me. There wasn’t.
The hall was clear, and then I was alone. I didn’t know where to go. I tentatively walked a ways down the main entrance hall. A girl my age rounded the corner, I believe her name was Kansas. She said to me, "you must be the new girl" and I said something to the effect of "I guess so" and she led me down the hall to the right. I remember when I entered the class thinking that the other students were bigger than me. I have a blurred image of one of the other girls stuck in my head. It seems her neck was level with my eyes.
My memories from Olmstead are as few as they are short, and none of them are particularly good. I was there for half of kindergarten, first and second grade. I remember getting mustard on a white shirt in kindergarten and trying to wipe it off, but only smearing it. I remember being dubbed "mustard girl" and being dared to eat it on apples, cookies, and other odd combinations, and because it got me attention, I did so.
I loved attention. I found an excellent way to get it while sitting on the floor in a square along the edge of a carpet. We did this every morning I think. The boy sitting next to me decided one day it would be cool to pull his pants down enough in back to show off his crack. He then tapped me and whispered look. I looked, and then said ewww. But I couldn’t help looking back again to see if he had fixed it or not. He had.
So then, I decided I could do it too. But I’m an idiot. I always over do things. I pulled my pants down far enough that my entire ass might as well been on the floor. Then I poked him and whispered look. He did, and then he said ewww. This is a great illustration of how odd children are. I think it was several days later when the girl who usually sat opposite to him was instead sitting next to me, while he was on my other side. I was in the corner of the square instead of him. The farthest away from the huge lined white tablet in which the class was circling words that are different parts of the sentence. At that point I didn’t even know school was supposed to teach you things. When I was finally called to circle a word one day, I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do, and just completely guessed.
Anyway, as I was saying. I was sitting between the boy and this other girl, and we were showing off our ass cracks again when the girl noticed. She said ewww and threatened to tell the teacher. I didn’t even care, but he was terrified. "Don’t tell! Please don’t tell! You can’t tell! Don’t tell!" She pretended that she didn’t care if we got in trouble, but the next thing you know, she’s poking me and whispering look. So I looked, she had taken things a step farther. I caught a quick glimpse of her exposed little snatch.
I don’t remember what any of this really looked like, they are memories, of memories, of memories, and I don’t recall any names from this point in my life, just remember recalling it previously. For the moment that she did this I remember feeling repulsed, and the seeing the color of what it would look like if she spread her lips apart when she showed us. I don’t know if she did or not, only that some part of her snatch had been exposed.
So me, being the entrepreneur of trouble, decided the next time I got a good opportunity I would do it too. I directed it at her, not him, because she was the one who started this new level of the game. I think I spread my lips apart when I did this, because I remember later in life thinking (for no apparent reason) that you had to show it that way. Perhaps that is how she did it, and perhaps that’s where I got the idea from.
The teachers didn’t seem to notice, but I think they actually did notice. I say this because later, when I was standing in line to exit the class room to go somewhere, while the teacher was waiting for the line to be complete and quiet, a boy behind me when to reach his hand up my skirt. I think he was trying to do that anyway, but I suppose he missed, because his arm came up in front of me between my knees. I was so startled that I screamed.
The teachers pulled me aside and I thought I was in serious trouble for screaming. I proclaimed that he was bothering me, and they told me this was no reason to scream. So I protested and said that he was touching me. Then they started being serious. How is he touching you? I tried to explain what he had done, and just to be clear she had to ask me if he had done this; and she put her hand up my skirt enough that it brushed my thighs. I was beginning to feel like the world was conspiring against me. I shook my head, no, not like that. I tried to explain, but who knows what they got out of it.
I suppose kindergarten was when I was exposed to a bunch of confusing sexual things. None of it was serious, but it was enough to spark my curiosity. I knew there was more to it, but what? The other girls were talking about having boyfriends, so I proclaimed one of the other boys my boyfriend, and the other girls held him down so that I could press my lips on his. I was so pleased with myself, but then he said "It’s over!" And the other girls said "He dumped you" and I didn’t get either statement.
So I kept trying to stand in line next to him, but the other girls would push me away and yell "he dumped you! He dumped you! Stay away from him!" I remember imaging a garbage truck dumping me on the ground, and being utterly confused. I didn’t understand that it could be over, because I didn’t know what there was to end in the first place.
My first grade memories include a girl "teaching" me to rock on the back two legs of a chair. Being blamed for making the "cubby" doors squeak intentionally, being made to miss a movie and write lines for something I didn’t do, being tricked in to talking in class by the other girls when I was trying to be quiet and pay attention, and still being called mustard girl. Too too
I believe it was during first grade that I started to play with Barbies. I remember that I was six when I started, at the same time that most children stop playing with dolls. At least that’s when my classmates stopped. Somehow, Barbie dolls changed everything.
~ Flying Dolls ~
Mom was determined that I would not have Barbie dolls because they were too expensive. But one Christmas I received two Barbie dolls anyway, in addition to a few older dolls that were hand-me-downs from an unknown source. I still remember my first dolls – Moly, a Christmas gift that was a ballerina in the box, her legs painted white for permanent stockings. She was the bad doll. There was Sabrina, a Teen Skipper doll. That was back when they made the younger dolls completely flat-chested, and she was a little taller than the later Stacy dolls.
Sabrina, named after Sabrina, the teenage witch, was the good Barbie, the hero of my tales. There was Crystal, a cheap doll that was not from Mattel, but rather some cheaper brand, whose body was a soft smashable plastic. She became Moly’s accomplice in crime. There was another doll whose name changed many times, another old styled doll – Sabrina’s mother, who was later named Ruth, after my mother.
These dolls, and the stories, names, adventures, clothing and purposes I gave to them became my version of a social life. My first Ken doll was named Kevin, which was a re-name I gave him at eleven, I don’t remember her original name. His first mate was Christy, a blonde, blue-eyed Barbie who was flexible at the knees and elbows. That made her my favorite. And if I remember correctly, that was the original crew: Ruth, Moly, Sabrina, Crystal, Kevin and Christy.
I was teased even more for playing with Barbie dolls in first grade. I was still the mustard girl, though not as often as I was in Kindergarten. My two most striking memories from first/second grade are not pleasant ones, and both occurred at Olmstead. One is short and vague, and it’s of a teacher pulling me up the stairs by my ear. She was moving too fast for me to properly keep up with her, and I remember the pain in my ear.
The second is much longer, and more taunting. Perhaps because I feel so embarrassed for how young and naive I was. I remember that I was in the class of my least-favorite teacher. Perhaps the teacher for "advanced students" or something of that sort. I remember her giving instructions about a piece of paper she handed out. She said "ignore the right column of words" and I didn’t know the difference between right and left yet. But I was pretty sure she meant the first column.
The paper had a column of words that I couldn’t read, and the second column had the word "page" over and over again, and the third column were blank spaces. I remember being so confused, and looking at the girl’s paper beside me. She was writing numbers in the spaces – page numbers of where she found the word in the dictionary.
I was so set on following directions that I tried not to be confused by the fact that all the numbers should be the same, because page should only be on one page. I went to the Ps and started hunting for page. I became quite sure that page was not in the dictionary at all. Several times I came close to giving up, but then I continue to look at each and every word in the Ps section. The girl beside me went up the teacher, had her paper corrected and sat back down. I could have copied some the numbers, and I considered it, since I could see which three she had gotten wrong. But I told myself that I would not be that sort of person and continued looking for page.
I remember that we left the class when we were done, and soon I was the very last student, and my paper was still blank, and I was still looking for the word page. Forty-five minutes had passed. The teacher came up to me, and exclaimed:
"Why are you in the Ps when you have not even started on the As!" I think there wasn’t even any P-words to be looked up on the page, because she was convinced that I hadn’t been trying at all. She told me I was her worst student, that I didn’t pay attention, that I was lazy, that I couldn’t possibly be that stupid.
I protested, "You told us to ignore that column!" And she said to me, "All the other students were paying attention! Everyone else understood the assignment. In forty-five minutes you couldn’t figure out that page is for what PAGE you find it on?" At that point everything became clear to me, and I think that she might have been the teacher to pull me up the stairs by my ear, but I’m not sure.
I was humiliated and angry.