[mindless1]

I was four years old when we lived in an apartment that was shaped like a castle. I used to sit on the stairway and admire the stained glass window with a slight crack in it. We had neighbors who were sometimes too strict for me. I didn't like them using the word "shutup" which wasn't allowed in my house. "Shutup" was a bad word. I would get sent to my room for using it.

Four was also the age when my younger brother, Joshua, was born. I remember the day clearly. I was at the apartment with my aunt Karen as she was babysitting me. We got a call from my dad who told us to come there fast. I have an image of when we first reached the birthing place where mom was. My dad opened up the door and had a look of both surprise and urgency. He told us to hurry up and come inside.

When I was seven I was an ambitious girl who wanted to be a singer, a dancer, and was always looking for an adventure. I often times acted like a tom-boy: watching power rangers and playing with toy cars. I loved going on hikes in the woods and climbing hills. My first best friend was a boy my age that was a lot similar to me. We have a picture of us holding hands in our strollers when we were just in kindergarten. Sometimes I was off in my own separate world. I had an over-active imagination and loved to write stories.

When I was seven I was the mother of two dollies, Samantha and Kelly. Kelly was a Christmas present. She was one of those new born dolls that could eat and wore a diaper. I took to her as if she were the real thing. I practically believed she was alive.

This was a fairly long phase of mine that I didn't give up until the age of eight.

In preschool I had two teachers, one was plump and black and the other was thin and white with blond hair. I think their names were Mrs. Jonas and Miss Christie. I remember for class we would sit around the circle on the floor and learn the days of the week. Each day week we learned a new month. The months had characters that represented them so it was easy for us to learn.

I made one special friend, Carolyn. It's a strange story how we first met. When it had come time to choose a dancing partner everyone rushed to find a friend. I picked out the one girl who looked like she didn't have any friends. We became close friends after that. She had a Barbie car and I was always asking my parents for one. It was too expensive, they would tell me. But I remember going to Toys R Us and admiring them at a distance, asking ‘please?’ I imagined it was fun driving around in your own mini car.


Sometimes the other kids would pick on the girl named Carolyn, and one time I came to her defense. A whole group of boys had tackled her and I wrestled them off of her and clawed one boy in the wrist. He cried and I was put in time out for the rest of the day. That time out seemed to last for centuries. Maybe I shouldn’t have came to her defence.

I never liked kindergarten that much. My teacher's name was Mrs. Hammer and had poufy blond hair that stuck out on either side. She was always taking off points and scolding me for being late. I lost some interest in some parts of school.

In the first grade I took part in the school plays and had fun doing that. I made some friends but always seemed to pick out the ones who were weird. For some reason, this pitted me against everyone else. When I had started to become friends with the "Weird kids" everyone else just figured I was weird too.

In the first grade I went to a Catholic school and had a teacher who was also a nun. She was somewhat strict with me because I was a "slowpoke". Sometimes I was so slow going down the stairs that all the other kids would rush by me calling me "slowpoke" "slowpoke". I wasn't a slowpoke but I was always very careful.

I remember when my dad first walked me to my school in the beginning of first grade. I would run down the long steep hill which led to our house until I got to the stop sign, swung around it three times to gain balance, and then took a left on 13th street towards my catholic school.

In school I first learned how to perfect printing out words and then in the second grade I learned cursive handwriting. In the first grade we did simple add and subtraction and in the second grade we learned multiplication. At some point I fell behind in my reading though and had to take a recess class. During the class I spent my time folding tissues and making them into purses.

Nearing the end of second grade was when things started to fall apart. My mom was sleeping hours and hours a day. I would come into her room wanting to snuggle or to do something like we once did. We used to do so many things; she was the one who taught me to write and to imagine so much. We had big art projects, anything I could think of we created.

My dad always took me to museums and libraries. Brought me presents when he got home from work at U.S. Steel as a computer programmer. Back then he had to take a bus because we only had one car. My parents had married "young" as they say. They didn't have a formal wedding in a church, but had a judge pronounce them husband and wife. My mom was young and always there to brighten up our days.

I thought constantly. I was somewhat mature for being in the second grade, considering that I had thought I would be so mature just to realize I was still so young. I tried to explain my thoughts to my friends but they weren't that enthusiastic. I walked to school every morning from my house. It wasn't a very long walk but I loved walking.

I was excited that I was going to go to the third grade at St. Scholastica; but at the time my parents weren't getting along too well. They fought a lot about bills, spending money, and I always tried to stop them by putting myself in the middle of it. This usually made them get mad at me. This turned into a never-ending cycle for me, they got mad, I tried to get them to stop fighting, and then they would start saying bad things to me. It was always that they were "having a discussion" not an argument.