Another Story of Me
This one is weirder than the last one, but also lighter. So there's that.
I was in 2nd grade. For som reason now lost entirely to my brain, we moved away from wherever we were before and got a house in Austell. This caused me to change schools, sometime after the school year had started. Details are lost to me. I was young. Give me a break.
So I find myself, shy and weird, in a new school. Yay! This being Cobb County at that time and in that grade, this is when you find yourself pretty much in one class all day long, with very little variance. The same teacher, same kids, same seating, same everything. In 2nd grade, the teach was Ms. Boston (later Mrs. Boston-Evans), and we pretty much sat at tables with 4 kids per. Only one table had an opening, and so I was sat there, with three girls. One of them was named Wendy.
Wendy was smart. Wendy was somewhat aggressive. Wendy did not like me. I did not like her. We were Not Friends. In fact, we were pretty much the smartest kids in that class, so we also tended to compete. This made things even more exciting.
This was my first nemesis, this Wendy. In all things we seemed destined to stand against each other, but also be stuck with each other. The next year we moved on to a different teacher and a different class atmosphere. This time we had our own (little) desks. And her last name was very early in the D's, so she sat right behind me. Many of the kids, including some of her posse, went to a different class with a different teach, as that's how things worked. Every year we got reshuffled a bit. But Wendy and I were stuck next to each other.
In this year, I was tested and found acceptable for Target, the Cobb County gifted program. Yay me! It allowed me to get out of class for like 45 minutes every day and go to another class where the Smart Kids did stuff. And so did Wendy. So my first opportunity to be away from her was foiled, because she was, I'm pretty sure, smarter than me. There was no escape.
In fact, the next year was the same. Wendy and I are stuck sitting next to each other, we both get stuck with each other going to Target, etc. For three years she was this unavoidable enemy, with whom I competed about pretty much everything the school offered us. I sang better, she scienced better. I won the spelling bee, she trounced me in reading and writing. Math was where we were stuck as equals
Then, in 5th grade, she was gone. Her family had moved away or something and there was, at long last, no Wendy. I was jubilant. I was free!
I was empty. These are weird years, and many details slip away. But they are also integral to the formation of your personality and world view, whether you notice or not. And for three years I had spent my life competing and measuring myself against the hated Wendy. When she was finally gone, I was just me. I had no one to measure myself against, no one to compete with, none of that. I was just the Smart Weird Kid in class. In truth, I may not have noticed. I may be applying Awesome Drama and Insight in hindsight, because I can. But still, looking back, that's what I see.
I never really had someone like that again in school. There was Joey in middle school, but the competition wasn't there, because I didn't care. He lived for scholastic excellent and I just lived.
So, looking back and remembering what I do, I found a interesting thing. Because Wendy was so integral to my life for those few years, because she made that kind of impact, she wormed her way into my psyche, in the weirdest ways. The very basics of her features (beyond of course being a child), have became some of the basis of what I find attractive in women. I am drawn to strong women who are capable in their chosen foci. She had this nice bob haircut which infiltrated my head and is now my Preferred Hairstyle on women. I can't, for the life of me, really remember her face, and I don't recall if there even were annuals in my elementary school. so I'm not sure I'd be able to find out. Heck, I'm not sure I want to know what I looked like then. But my memory has her having all the basic features I now find I constantly look for in a women.
So, yeah. Just because someone isn't your friend, in any way, does not exempt them from impacting your life profoundly. If we had managed to reach high school together, we would either have murdered each other or dated. I'll never know, really. But, unlike pretty much everything else in elementary school, I remember her clearly. Wendy turns out to be one of the bizarre Foundations of my life.
I was in 2nd grade. For som reason now lost entirely to my brain, we moved away from wherever we were before and got a house in Austell. This caused me to change schools, sometime after the school year had started. Details are lost to me. I was young. Give me a break.
So I find myself, shy and weird, in a new school. Yay! This being Cobb County at that time and in that grade, this is when you find yourself pretty much in one class all day long, with very little variance. The same teacher, same kids, same seating, same everything. In 2nd grade, the teach was Ms. Boston (later Mrs. Boston-Evans), and we pretty much sat at tables with 4 kids per. Only one table had an opening, and so I was sat there, with three girls. One of them was named Wendy.
Wendy was smart. Wendy was somewhat aggressive. Wendy did not like me. I did not like her. We were Not Friends. In fact, we were pretty much the smartest kids in that class, so we also tended to compete. This made things even more exciting.
This was my first nemesis, this Wendy. In all things we seemed destined to stand against each other, but also be stuck with each other. The next year we moved on to a different teacher and a different class atmosphere. This time we had our own (little) desks. And her last name was very early in the D's, so she sat right behind me. Many of the kids, including some of her posse, went to a different class with a different teach, as that's how things worked. Every year we got reshuffled a bit. But Wendy and I were stuck next to each other.
In this year, I was tested and found acceptable for Target, the Cobb County gifted program. Yay me! It allowed me to get out of class for like 45 minutes every day and go to another class where the Smart Kids did stuff. And so did Wendy. So my first opportunity to be away from her was foiled, because she was, I'm pretty sure, smarter than me. There was no escape.
In fact, the next year was the same. Wendy and I are stuck sitting next to each other, we both get stuck with each other going to Target, etc. For three years she was this unavoidable enemy, with whom I competed about pretty much everything the school offered us. I sang better, she scienced better. I won the spelling bee, she trounced me in reading and writing. Math was where we were stuck as equals
Then, in 5th grade, she was gone. Her family had moved away or something and there was, at long last, no Wendy. I was jubilant. I was free!
I was empty. These are weird years, and many details slip away. But they are also integral to the formation of your personality and world view, whether you notice or not. And for three years I had spent my life competing and measuring myself against the hated Wendy. When she was finally gone, I was just me. I had no one to measure myself against, no one to compete with, none of that. I was just the Smart Weird Kid in class. In truth, I may not have noticed. I may be applying Awesome Drama and Insight in hindsight, because I can. But still, looking back, that's what I see.
I never really had someone like that again in school. There was Joey in middle school, but the competition wasn't there, because I didn't care. He lived for scholastic excellent and I just lived.
So, looking back and remembering what I do, I found a interesting thing. Because Wendy was so integral to my life for those few years, because she made that kind of impact, she wormed her way into my psyche, in the weirdest ways. The very basics of her features (beyond of course being a child), have became some of the basis of what I find attractive in women. I am drawn to strong women who are capable in their chosen foci. She had this nice bob haircut which infiltrated my head and is now my Preferred Hairstyle on women. I can't, for the life of me, really remember her face, and I don't recall if there even were annuals in my elementary school. so I'm not sure I'd be able to find out. Heck, I'm not sure I want to know what I looked like then. But my memory has her having all the basic features I now find I constantly look for in a women.
So, yeah. Just because someone isn't your friend, in any way, does not exempt them from impacting your life profoundly. If we had managed to reach high school together, we would either have murdered each other or dated. I'll never know, really. But, unlike pretty much everything else in elementary school, I remember her clearly. Wendy turns out to be one of the bizarre Foundations of my life.