My first decade

Year 1: I eat a big cake and look surprised a lot.  I have no memories of this year, but this is what I have learned from photos.

Year 2: My little brother is born.  I am very skeptical about his arrival.  I wanted a sister.

Year 3: I give up my security blanket with no prompting from my mother.  I am a big girl. 

Year 4: Pink and purple are my favorite colors and I refuse to wear anything other than a dress. On my birthday, I ask my mother where babies come from and she tells me the anatomical truth. I tell the other kids at preschool.

Year 5: I am obsessed with Punky Brewster and He-man.  I don’t remember much else from this year.

Year 6: A boy on the playground accidentally kicks me in the nose while dismounting the jungle gym. When I bring my bloodied self to the nurse, she accuses me of picking my nose and refuses to give me an ice pack. I am indignant because I DO pick my nose sometimes, but that’s not how I got my bloody nose. My first experience with injustice.

Year 7: My father brings us candy bars when he gets home from work at night.  We begin yelling “a KitKat and a Snickers!!” when he leaves in the morning rather than goodbye.

Year 8: We move to a new town. I cry and cry because I love my third grade teacher, Mrs. Hubert, and I don’t want to leave her. I have Dorothy Hamill hair.

Year 9: We get to begin learning to play instruments at school.  I want to play the oboe or the viola, but my mother wants me to play the saxophone.  So I play the saxophone.  I am in the only girl in a class of eight children and get a lot of ribbing for being better than all the boys.

Year 10: I find out I have to wear glasses when I’m told to read a word the teacher has written on the board and say “tomato” instead of “tornado”.  I am mortified, because that is how all the young adult books I read say I should feel.