Lunch Lady LUZ

Once upon an elementary school, there was a lunch lady. Named Luz.

Not pronnounced "Luce" or "Luhz"
....prounounced.... LOOHZ.

Luz was from...i dont even know what country. Turkey? Trinidad? Somewhere in the baltics? IDK.
anyways...all the kids were a yiiiiiiddle bit afraid of her, because she had a VERY thick accent and was always frazzled and frustrated when she had to deal with children. she was nice if you were one of the first 10 kids to pay in the lunchline, because it was....only 10 kids. but i was usually in one of the bad classes with the 'bad' kids, so we always got to lunch later than the rest of the classes. we waited in the hot sun, were STARVING, loud and wrestless......so....150 kids later, i usually got my hot lunch....from Luz...the pissed-off-english-as-a-second-language-lunch-lady.

My elementary was known for having the most AWFUL hotdogs (pink and green hotdogs that bounced when you dropped them...) and we were also known for the best D-A-M-N curly fries this side of the mississippi. they were perfect curly fries. long and soggy and seasoned to boot. ANYWAY.

So, I would get meany-pants LUZ when she was sweaty, pissed, frazzled, stressed, and so annoyed with the children that she didnt even try to speak english, she basically just yelled at you:
"AHYYEHHUOUOUYYEAHHAHOUOOBONONOKJHYIOOUUWWHEO!!!!"
this was after i had handed her my handful of sweaty change from my swishy pants that probably consisted of dimes and nickels. Sure she didnt like counting the change...but shes a lunch lady, what should she expect!? i always had to hold my breath nervously whenever i got hot lunch...because sometimes Luz would 'count wrong' and look up at you and started jibberishing at you again.
Cheeks hot.
Palms sweaty.
Shove hands in swishy pants pockets.
Nervous glance upwards through my bangs.

Luz: You No HAVA!!!!! Bruntomukkay?
me: *shyly* umm huh?
Luz: Bruntomu nohaveh tensentsa!!! ukkay!
me: .............what did you say?
Luz: BRUNTOMU TENSENTSA UKAY? UKKAYGOH!

and then she would shoo me off to pick up my flimsy white tray holding tots, fries and cold green beans. How was i to know i was 10 cents short? I HAD HOLES IN MY POCKETS SOMETIMES OKAY!?

Good memories in that cafeteria i tell you. Finding out my elementary crush actually liked me back..... trading my fig newtons for some pudding or gushers.....leaving class early and walking my kindergarten buddies to get free lunch..(and trying to get them to teach me arabic)...and the best, was Sarah S.  One time in the cafeteria, i remember telling Sarah S. that the red jello served by Luz was actually sheep guts. She believed me and threw away her lunch.

Anyway.
So..everyone knew the lunch food AND the lunch lady were sketchy..................................So what did i do as class representative in the school student council?

....Wrote a school newspaper article about the *mystery meat* us children were being served in the cafeteria. I think the title of the article was actually called, *Mystery Meat in the Cafeteria*. I was so clever and original. and PUBLISHED. i was published. WIN.

i remember going in during student council time with a friend and telling Luz we needed to examine the meat. I dont remember the conversation, but i imagine it went something like this:

Me: I need to examine the meat for the school newspaper
Luz: hjfkdshfjkdshfkdjslafhuniwrhuialnmc
Me:.......
Luz: FHDJSAKFHDKLAFKJAHF!!!!!!!!!
Me: .....meat.
Luz: HEEYA *throws down frozen chicken patties infront of me and my 'assistant'.*

We tore into the meat and find green tinted coloring (real) and suspicious black 'dots' (fake on the suspicious part)...........i published in the paper that it was probably mold...but im pretty sure it was just pepper.

Moral of the story: Luz was crazy and fed us poison. And she had a poisonous attitude towards children.

The end.

Gabby's pool and Stephanie Tanner

Once upon a hot summer day, my mother decided to take all of us over to my big sister jackie’s friends house, Gabby. Gabby’s family was so sweet and im sure said ‘suuuuuure bring all of your 5 daughters over to swim any time you want!’ They were just nice like that and im sure we begged our mother to take them up on that offer. The most water activity we had was running through the sprinklers with umbrellas...so a pool day would have been UNREAL.  So, one hot day, I remember finally walking with my mom and sisters down 2 blocks to Gabby’s house. I had been SO EXCITED all day and had tried patiently to contain my excitement by watching Full House for hours on end, so I would get my mind off how excited I was. Well..when the time came, we got to gabby’s backyard..and low and behold….the most GLORIOUS dough-boy pool you have ever seen in your life. It even had a ladder you had to climb up on!!!!!!!! Man this was great…this was…. *fear sets in* did I have my water wings on? Were there sharks in there? Other marine wildlife? Octopus? Whales? Octopus-shark-whales? Has anyone ever drowned in this pool before?

My sisters hopped in, and I insisted on following my mom into the kitchen where she chatted with Gabby’s mom. I wanted to wait a few minutes.... maybe i just ate and wanted my stomach to settle? I was being responsible....I'd swim later.

My sisters had immediately rushed to the pool and im sure flopped their homely little selves in. (you don’t believe how homely we looked? Heres a picture of a regular summer day growing up):

Anyway.. as i would run between the kitchen and would longingly run to the sliding glass door to watch my sisters swim around...my sisters would say.. ‘Cmon coco! Come in the water with us. We’ll hold on to you!’ and ‘oh just come in…its fun! We wont even splash..’  or ‘I’ll let you wear my goggles!’ anyways, their words did not find comfort in the fear I was feeling. I was no fool. I was a cautious child. And then something happened. as I was considering getting into the glorious pool......... *flashback to great America* the fear…and anticipation…had suddenly filled my bladder. I had to pee SO BADLY but of course did NOT want to use a strangers bathroom! HOW EMBARRASSING WOULD THAT BE!? Only babies had to go to the bathroom at strangers houses...and I was 5! I realized I probably had to pee since my Full House marathon, but was so enthralled by D.J. and Steves love, that I probably did not want to miss a SECOND of those episodes.

I was fine. I’d hold it. Im a champ. Over and out. Its not like it was at Great America..there was no rushing water, rapids and waterfalls taunting me. It was fine. I was fine and a BIG GIRL. I’d hold my pee like a champ.

Finally after getting bored of mother’s conversation and my sisters nagging…I decided to go outside. I didn’t have to pee so bad, I was really hot, and could use a dip in the pool. brush that dirt of ya shoulda. i could do it. I WAS GOING TO OVERCOME MY FEAR DANGIT. I had waited so long for this dough-boy pool experience.

            So, my sisters hopped back in, and waited for me to come in. I climbed one step. Water wings ready. I was ok. I climbed 2 steps. Getting nervous. I climbed three steps and saw just how deep the water was in that 3  ½ foot walmart pool.  Four steps. *fear floods me, in an excited sort of way* and suddenly…I feel hot pee running down my legs. Standing at the top of the swim steps.....i look down at the pee dripping down my legs..back up at the pool staring at me. down at my legs...back up at the rest of the swimmers.. the whoooooole pool watching me in disgust. *crickets chirp*. PANIC.

I of course start crying and run to my mother, in which she profusely apologizes to Gabby and her mother  for her daughter urinating all over their swim steps and walks me home to change.

Annnnnd that was the day I was so excited to go swimming, that I peed myself.....

 --------

Cut to a nightmare I had around this time. It was of course, after the swimming pool incident…probably 6 months after this traumatizing experience.

I was there once more.. in Gabby’s backyard…with my swimmy on and water wings ready. The large walmart pool  that had defeated me earlier was calling my name. My sisters were there, encouraging me to get in.  but this time, I was so much braver than I had been in real life!!

(Redemption!!!! This would be my chance)

I walked over to the pool confidently…only to see Willy, from Free Willy jumping gallantly across the pool waters. I was amazed! A pool AND a whale!?!? *FIST PUMP!* Amazing. How cool was it that this pool was actually big enough that a medium dream whale could be swimming around in it!? I could almost hear 'i will be there' by michael jackson playing in the background of my dream.

To fulfill this amazing dream.. naturally I want to get in and swim with it. As I am climbing the dream ladder… right where I had started wetting myself in real life, in my DREAM LIFE, fear absolutely overcomes me. What do I see when I look down? No, not dream-pee running down my dream-legs....

I see Stephanie Tanner’s dead head, FLOATING IN THE WATER.

Willy had killed her. Decapitated her. And her dead head was floating in Gabby's pool.

I looked around.... my sisters were gone.. Gabby was gone.. my mom was gone...it was me, killer Willy, and Stephanie Tanner's dead head.

I was absoutely dream paralyzed.

I immediately woke up crying and vowed that the rest of my childhood, i would not get in a pool big enough to house even the idea of a dream killer whale.
or a medium dream whale.
or Stephanie Tanner.

ghetto childhood.

My mom didn’t really let me play with many of my elementary ‘school friends’ when i was little…because

1.      She didn’t know their parents and didn’t feel comfortable letting her children play in strangers homes….

2.      She didn’t want me to get kidnapped and crazy murdered.

Growing up next to Oakland in silly little Fremont, I can now understand why I thought my mom was so ‘mean’ when it came to me not being able to go over to their houses often. Kids in Fremont got snatched up like frickin CANDY.  Candy I tell you! A little girl I was friends with was chased home after school one day by some big scary man, and the only way she got away from her attacker was hiding in some bushes until he stopped searching for her. Bless her skinny little heart. The next day the school sent out a letter to the parents warning them about this creep lurking around the school grounds and trying to steal chillins. And THEN there was that time that the school had a lockdown because some guy in my neighborhood had a gun and was holding his grandma hostage for hours and was on crack or something? I don’t know. That was weird. That warranted a legit lock your doors and lock your windows lockdown in all the classrooms and we didn’t get to go home for HOUUUURRRSSS. Though  i thought it was super duper fun in my mind, I would have peed my pants if I were in my mothers shoes. oh and THEN there was that legit shooting in brandi's complex across from the junior high. Of COURSE she didn’t let me play at random peoples houses she didn't know!!!!!! Good gosh.

            SO ANYWAY…there were lots of creeps round my part of town. Did I know this? No. Was I aware that many of them were the older siblings/parents of the children I associated with? No. So mother, you had every right to not let me play too often at strange people’s homes. (Had you pulled up a map of the sex offender registry of my city...you'd see little red dots probably fill the whole thing. Actually, the whole map would just be one big blob of red sex offender flags. ggeuhhh.)

However, there was the occasional instance when I would incessantly cry and beg my mother to let me go over to my friends homes for an afternoon..(im sure only after meeting them first)…and I remember one time I was at my friend house...lets call her Sarah. Sarah was one of my school BFFs in my early childhood years..so when I finally went to her house, it was like a whole different world. I was at Sarah’s actual house?!? Woooooooo! (its like when you see a teacher outside of school, only BETTER! And with free snacks I never was allowed to eat! Oreos! Gushers! Pudding!) 

Well, after we got bored of playing in her house and tip toeing around her large scary grandpa who always wore overalls…(and also legitimately offered children beer)….we went outside into the garage. I remember noticing some weird looking thing on a separate table over on the workbench part of the garage….it was big, had funnels and tubes all sorts of funny looking things…. I went over to touch it, and Sarah, with a look of warning, says..’oooo don’t touch that!!! That’s my grandpas. Its off limits.’ Okay. Weird I thought, but whatev. It looked cool so I guess I  could admire from afar. What a cool, weird, test tube funnel swirly weird thingy made of junk.

Grow up 10 years and realize her grandpa had a meth lab in their garage.

Lulllzzz.

Ginger's Wings

Soooooooooo this one time, I ate dog food.

I was probably 4 or 5, and had gone over to my sister’s friend’s house with them for some reason. I don’t remember why…I was pretty young and wasn’t cool enough to be friends with any of their friends. (My sisters secretly/not so secretly despised me at this age, because i begged them literally everyday to play board games with me...Stratego..Sorry..Monopoly..you name it. They always said no.) My mom was probably tired of me annoying her..or had to run some errands..ANYWAY…I was there. And I remember, my sister’s SNEAKY little mean friend, Kelsey, telling me that her dog Ginger… could fly.

WHAT!?!? No……HOW!? And just like that I believed her. I imagined that old golden retriever floating around the room like it aint no thing. She told me that Ginger could fly, because she had magic dog food that she fed to her. And guess what? There was still a little bit of that magic dog food left in Ginger’s bowl over there. How lucky was I right in that very moment!?!? I slowly glance to her half-empty food bowl.....

Cut to Nicole’s thought process right now: Nicole eating out of Ginger’s foodbowl, nibbling a few bits of kibbles, and suddenly sprouting WINGS, ripping holes in the back of my esmerelda shirt, and gracefully flying up to the top of Kelsey's tall red bunk beds where my sisters were playing. HA! They would think I’M the cool one and not the little stupid one if I frickin had WINGS and could FLY from eating some stupid dog food they didn’t even THINK to eat!!!! Those fools would be SO JEALY and SO SORRY they didn’t take that chance! They'll wanna play with me once i have WINGS for heavens sake!!!!!!!!!

Cut to reality: Dogfood did not sprout wings, did not taste good, and I’m pretty sure Ginger got a litttttlllleee territorrial and did not take kindly to a miniature human eating out of her food bowl.

....I think this experience was one of the other times my family wondered if a genetic disorder had been suppressed for the past 4 years of my life until this moment.

Scooby & Pee

I had four very traumatic experiences before the age of 5. Two of them involoved a dog…the other two..urine. I’ll rotate subjects just to mix it up a bit.

#1- I went to “Great America” with my family this one time. I was 4, little, and adorable. I remember wearing biker shorts, a red sweater, and a neon baseball cap. I cant be sure, but I think I may have even been wearing a fanny pack. Yes, i'm sure i was. i needed it to hold my heart-shaped sunglasses. It was a kids dream…amusement park for a whole day!? Righteous. Me and my sisters went on all the little kiddie rides..and I sat out with my mom when they went on all the big kid rides. I remember all day my sisters and dad were trying to convince me to go on the rapids ride…I can’t remember what it was called, but the name was terrifying in and of itself..roaring rapids? Raging rapids? Grizzly rapids? Something. I was psyching myself out all day, trying to mentally prepare to pretend to be brave infront of my family and teling them I would go on the ride. All day my mind changed back and forth…well…all day my mother also made sure we were all properly hydrated. I had made up  my mind that sure I COULD go on the water rapids ride if I really wanted to…but the real reason I started protesting was because my tiny little bladder was suddenly so full, even the sound of water would probably make me EXPLODE. I don’t remember why I didn’t say anything…probably because my mom had asked me every hour ‘do you need to go to the bathroom Nicole?’ and I probably got annoyed…and stopped listening to my bodily functions and started protesting out of pure spite.

            So…there we are..my sisters and dad load onto the ride, and my mom and myself hung out on the side watching. We are watching..and watching..and I am seeing the rapids..listening to the rush of water… seeing waterfalls and splashes… and sprinkles..drizzles and wooshes.….and… WIZZ.  I could NOT help myself. Watching that water for just 5 minutes just made me LOSE it and I lost all control of my 4 year old tiny tank. I was so embarrassed, and waddled over to where my mom was sitting, and started crying. She looked at my wet widdle biker shorts, and im sure was a bit embarrassed herself to see her child obviously had pee running down her legs. Since I was crying hysterically, she said, ‘hey..i have an idea..why don’t we go to splat city!’ splat city was the waterish part of the park where kids could run through all these weird bucket fountains. I don’t know why it was called splat city..but I remember we weren’t allowed to go because my parents didn’t want freezing wet children in their car for an hour on the way home. Well HA to the HA! I tricked the system. We got there and I ran through every single fountain to cover up my obvious pee stain on the front of my shorts. My mom had proposed the perfect plan. I soaked myself in the fountains, and no one could tell I had peed myself. When we walked back to the rapids ride..my sisters, shocked and offended at the special treatment, said..’MOM!? WHAT!!! WHY DID SHE GET TO GO TO SPLAT CITY!?!?’ they were pissed, I was covered in piss, but smug and content at the same time. Winning.

#2- The first dog story….was a dream. More like a nightmare. I dreamt that Scooby Doo was walkin around on his hind legs in a detective suit looking for me. No no…. HUNTING me. Sraight up hunting me and wanted me dead. Everything around me was black. I was terrified, so I hid in my dream tent I conjured up. I was looking out the telescope for Scooby…and finally thought I had lost him. Dream-minutes passed and i was alone. I was safe! All of a sudden.. what do I see through my dream scope? Scooby. In a detective hat. Pointing a gun at me. He shot me. I screamed. I woke up covered in literal SWEAT AND TEARS.. Ran to my parents bed…and didn’t tell them for YEARS about that dream because I was so traumatized. This great dane will come in to play in just a moment.

Scooby: 1 Nicole: 0

#3- I had this friend in kindergarten…lets call her..Jules. Jules was known to have accidents quite often, and she peed herself at kindergarten probably every other week. Well, one day me and jules were having WAY too much fun on the playground. We were playing tag, and if I remember correctly, a boy was chasing us. Me and jules RAN to the top of the metal slide and waited for our attacker to approach us. (Please note: this metal slide got WICKED hot in the midday sun…and a fast slide down it always ended up with slight burns on the back of bare legs if you hit it just right). Jules got nervous and started sliding down the hot slide quite quickly all of a sudden. What was she thinking!? I remember the sound she made while sliding down..."WWoooaahhHHHHaauhghghuhahahhuh!" This wasn’t part of our plan! We were supposed to just wait at the top of the slide for at LEAST 1 more minute. But oh wait…why was she sliding so much faster than normal? Why was she acting so weird when she stood up? Don’t worry, she had politely left a trail of pee down the hot metal slide for me to follow. PANIC SETS IN. My attacker is approaching the slide. Do I back down and get tagged? Even if I WANTED to back down and accept defeat, there were 6 other kids perched on the cheese grater stairs waiting to slide down! I could not coordinate a group reverse..it was too complicated. So what did I do? Grabbed the burning hot sides of the slides…and slowly crab walked/slid down the slide, in jules hot pee, to the bottom of the slide. By now she had ran into hiding, I was covered in hot pee, and the unsuspecting kids were blaming ME for the mess on the slide as each of them slid to their doom.

#4- Kindergarten recess, after lunch, me and my bff brandi were playing hopscotch on the asphault. When all of a sudden…a GIANT great dane can be seen in the distance, bounding towards all of the unsuspecting kindergarteners, hungry for human flesh. Scooby. Wildly scrambling for a plan, brandi, terrified of dogs and mammals in general, suddenly goes catatonic for a moment.. and then she screams. My heroic side kicks in about 5 seconds into the ordeal. “RUUUUUNNN BRANNDIIIII! TO THE SWWWIIINNNGGGSSS! SWING HIGH BRANDI!!! RUNNNNN!” Scooby. The great dane was galloping towards me. Children were screaming and running to the jungle gyms, scrambling for the top of the slides, and brandi started to pump faster than I’d ever seen before. And where was i? I was dancing…with Scooby. Our eyes locked. I went left…he went left. I broke right..he broke right. We were 5 feet apart now. The dog was taller than me and resembled the detective who had murdered me. I lunged backwards, he lunged forwards…Scooby. By the grace of heaven, a yard duty caught wind of the canine intruder and caught its attention. It was just enough time for me to run to the swings and swing high enough that I could kick the dog in the face if it came too close. Finally the dog was caught, all the kindergarteners were in tears, and recess was cut short.

Scooby 1: Nicole: 1

totter.

The worst day of my life occurred when I was 4 and a half. Im quite positive I woke up on the wrong side of the bunkbed.

                The first half of the memory is sort of vivid…but I remember everything that could go wrong, did. I remember I stubbed my widdle toe that morning and pretty sure I scream/cried like a banshee for a good 45 minutes. After the initial toe stub, I kept hurting myself as the day went on. I felt like demons from the eternal injury section of hell were literally working against me..and I was sure to die by the days end. Im pretty sure that day I burned my tongue on some mac and cheese, later bit my burned tongue, slammed my arm in my play desk, (in which i insisted on an ace bandage to heal me), tripped and scraped my knee, probably got smacked in the face/got my hair ripped out by 2 year old michelle a few times and the spiral just kept going downwards from there. 

Since my miserable day kept getting worse, my wonderful mother decided she would take us to the park to cheer me up even though it was bloody hot outside in ghetto old fremont. I was stoooooooked! I put my kicks on and me and all my sisters loaded into the big purple station wagon. She dropped us off at the toe-up from the flo-up community center park as previously mentioned before…(the same community center where I met my first love, Matthew Frankenstein of course), and then went to the convenience store a block away to pick up a ‘surprise’ for me to cheer up my little self.

             I sprinted to the jungle gym and was essentially running and playing my bad day right outta my 4 year old system. My sisters knew I was having a miserable day, so they tried to cheer me up as well. They even PLAYED WITH ME! (Sharon probably bribed them). I always begged my older sisters to play board games with me, but the next best thing was when Kristin allowed herself to actually get on the teeter totter with me. (she was 6, I was 4, and obviously not cool enough to be seen teetering with…but she made an exception for this day. i had a speech impediment and huge bangs...i don't blame her.)

                   Things were going GREAT and all of a sudden, the ominous station wagon pulls back up. Now…please imagine this in slow motion: happy little Nicole, laughing and giggling and teetering and tottering to my hearts desire. Hair flopping in the wind….little size tiny pink shoes bouncing off the ground…

As my mom gets out of the car and holds up the treats she got for us…. My sister Kristin obnoxiously screamed, “………………..POPSICLES!!???!!?!!!!!??!!!!!!??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” and immediately leaped off the teeter-totter.... MID TOTTER….which left me to plummet down towards the ground a good 3 feet and land on my four year old fanny. HARD. Hard enough that I could  not get up, even at the sight of popsicles... and quickly started wail/sobbing once more, probably from getting the wind knocked out of me/being shocked my sister would do such a thing, im sure also rolling around in the dirt/sand underneath the teeter totter waiting for my inevitable death.

Aaaaaaaaaand I blocked the rest of the day out of my memory. The end.

Chapter 1- Speech impediments & my first love.

My friends always wonder how I remember so much crap. I must say, I have a great long-term memory. My short term is not so great, but whatever. Most people don’t remember lots from growing up.. but not me. I remember every nasty hot lunch I got..i remember getting yelled at by the yard duty when I wiped banana on my friends pants..i remember forgetting my ruler and sitting on the red bench at recess…I remember way way way too much.

So? i thought i'd jot down all the crap i remembered, just for kicks and giggles.

Chapter 1: The early years.

Pre-school. I was a skinny kid clad in green biker shorts and over-sized hand me down mickey mouse tee shirts.  Though dressed like an orphan with a bad haircut, I was adorable because I still had darling mini baby teeth. (It is a known fact that kids get annoying when their adult teeth come in all skeewompis and rigid, and it automatically changes their ‘cuteness’ into ‘obnoxious’ and then into ‘stop spitting on me and shut your mouth’ when they get braces and can’t talk like a human.

Back to cute me. I also had a marvelous speech impediment..which made me sound like I was deaf and possibly born in another country. My sisters can attest to this. Not being able to say my ‘R’s made watching ‘Weading Wainbow’ QUITE difficult when my mother couldn’t figure out the channel I wanted her to put on. (I’d sit in my baby sisters car seat and eat granola bars in front of our 12 channel 13 inch tv.  Yes, I was living the American dream, I was a speech-impediment-stricken-child  and loved rocking in an infant car seat at the tender age of 4). I dreamed of being a guest star on ‘don’t take my word for it…’ where obnoxious children in outdated sweaters would talk about their favorite kid's books. I believed I could memorize those lines better than any of those bi-racial kids.  I desperately wanted to meet Lavar Burton. And, I desperately wanted to be a star.

My speech impediment also hindered my eating habits, which caused both frustration and comic relief to my family, which pissed me right off. When I begged for ‘Waagnts and Cwaghas’ my father didn’t understand this as a type of food, but probably wondered if a gene mutation was surfacing after 4 years of somewhat normalcy. All I wanted was ‘ranch and crackers’ and wondered why my father couldn’t hear me, and I worried for his sanity. Also? only knowing how to say your 'j's like 'd's makes it very hard to yell to your mom a room is jammed and hot and really sweaty and I needed to go home, which came out as ‘dammed ahn haughnt ah wealley swea-hee ahn I neehee to go hoghem.’ (Note to future children: I will send you to resource if you talk like a moron. I don’t care if you  miss recess, you will not talk like a moron.)

Saving my mothers sanity, she sent me to preschool at the ghetto local community center for half the day where I begged for extra homework from miss Lisa and fell in love with the first dreamy boy I’d ever met. Matthew Frankenstein.  Yes, that was his real name. No he did not look like a green corpse, but had beautiful black hair and an adorable freckle on his cheek.(That was the beginning of pairing my first name with my love's last. My parents should have taken this as a forewarning and been prepared for my teenage dating years. Had I been able to write? All over my preschool drawings would have been doodles of ‘Nicole Frankenstein’ with little hearts dotting the I’s) OH how I swooned at him and how I strategically invited him into my fort to take him away from all the other desperate girls in my class for stolen romantic moments under the counter during play time.

A downfall of this new found love, was curiosity. Something I’m deeply ashamed of… I could not exactly figure out the difference between boys and girls. So naturally, I invited my darling Matthew into the bathroom with me to use to toilet next to me, so I could figure out why boys pee standing up, and why girls sit down. (the preschool toilets obviously didn’t value 4 year old privacy, so there were NO dividers in between the squat stations. Scary, but intriguing. I blame them for my curiosity). Matthew refused the offer telling me he didn’t need to go, and I think I was slightly relieved because I'm pretty sure my 4 year old self had to go #2. So, it took me until kindergarten to understand the difference between boys and girls, when Max Broun explained to me things I think I’ve blocked out of my memory.( All I remember from that day was him coming out of the bathroom and after our conversation, he ate a handful of chunky paste and I told on him) So, was it curiosity or a precursor to turning into a female pervert? I am ashamed.

Next up: The worst day of my 4 year old life.