The Weird Kid. Period.

   My six-year-old daughter tells me regularly that she can’t wait to grow up. She wants to dictate her own bedtime and eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch WHENEVER SHE WANTS. I get it, kid; growing up sounds awesome, but trust me when I tell you that this is as cush as your life is ever going to be. Don't rush it! But naturally, I wanted the exact same thing. When we’re children and we grow up in safe homes, we don’t always recognize that our lives are AMAZING. When we run, it’s not to burn calories and squeeze in our cardio, it’s because it gets us somewhere faster! People make us food--all the time! We’ve never had to contemplate which brand of paper towels to buy or automate our bill payments, and every night someone tucks us in a safe little cocoon and reads us stories. No one tucks me in or compliments my ability to dress myself anymore.

         But as a child and a socially awkward tween, I wanted nothing more than to leave childhood in my dust. I used to ride my bike around aimlessly, daydreaming about being accepted into the exclusive club of puberty. I wanted the curves and the hair and the bras and the weird smells, and most importantly, I wanted the mac daddy (mac mommy?) of them all. I wanted my period. This meant you had arrived. You were a grown up and would be treated as such. No one could debate your womanly grown up status once you could complain about your cramps while simultaneously snarking at everyone and apologizing that you're not quite yourself right now. 

Windbreakers were the height of fashion

         My desire for menstruation aside, I was a bit of a weird kid. Not so weird that people might assume something was wrong with me, but definitely on the eccentric side, dangerously bordering on bizarre. I requested a butter churn for my ninth birthday. I got my first bee sting dissecting a bee in a science experiment THAT I ASSIGNED MYSELF. I showed goats and rode my bike in circles around our back yard telling stories only I could hear. And what set me apart from most kids in my grade, my secret shame, was that I lived for Human Growth and Development. You know that awkward three-day period in elementary school where we are shown outdated movies about our changing bodies and learn the correct terms for wet dreams and fallopian tubes? That time of the year that all the kids protest and turn squeamish and the collective maturity dips extra low? I couldn’t wait. When the lights would dim and the screen would fill up with all that anatomical correctness, the giggling would start and all I could think was Quiet fools! I’ve got shit to learn!

          I wanted to know everything – I wanted the roadmap to womanhood. I studied and absorbed this information as if knowledge could somehow will my period to come faster and grant me early access to the club. In the fourth grade, Mrs. Sherman opened up a box for any questions we could drop in anonymously, and I wrote out a detailed letter explaining all my physical credentials and asked for a prediction of when she thought my big day would come. I’m confident she regretted that box afterwards.

         Though my period would not arrive for several years, I proudly embraced the smaller landmarks of “the change” and showed them off as subtly as I could. The day I discovered my first sprouted armpit hair, I wore an ill fitting sleeveless dress and raised my hand incessantly. Soon after, I would complain loudly about my itchy new bra straps beneath my sheer white shirt. My deodorant might just happen to spill out of my backpack multiple times a day. How embarrassing! Now you all know that I have to use deodorant because my body is just changing so rapidly! Mortifying, but check it out…it’s Lady Speedstick and it smells like violets!

          But much like a movie you've been dying to see that has been hyped beyond your wildest imagination, the actual film turns out to be underwhelming. The day of the big arrival, the show, the great Bambino, was wildly inconvenient. It was the first week of sixth grade; I'm proudly sporting a fresh perm and an oversized tie dye t-shirt. My best friend and I saunter to the bathroom together at recess, because we are sixth grade sophisticated women, and that’s what women do. I step into a stall while she stands by the sink admiring her bright yellow coat in the mirror; I am sitting on the toilet, pants around my knees, staring baffled at my underwear. What in the…? How did I…?

            “Meg, I have a problem,” I call out sheepishly.

            “What is it?”

            “I think…I think I spilled chocolate milk in my underwear,” I tell her.   

            She pauses before responding with amusement: “I don’t think you had chocolate milk at lunch today. And how would that even happen?” She has a point, but what then what the hell is this? What has happened to me? Could this be it? The big Kahuna? The pinnacle of womanhood? I thought it would be more glamorous, and less….squishy. In all my desire to grow up and be given my entrance ticket to adulthood, now that it was upon me, I felt duped and unprepared. The only thing to do was panic, shove a wad of toilet paper in my pants and wait uncomfortably for the day to end.

            Enduring cramps on the bus ride home and feeling no elation from it, I walk in the front door and tell my mom. She kindly shows me where we keep the female supplies, and I wear something akin to a diaper for the next four days. The disappointment is palpable. This is NOTHING like what 7^th Heaven promised me. There are no elaborate festivities, no badge declaring I’d made it, and no girlfriend bonding sessions with bottles of Ibuprofen and cookie dough. Worst of all? What eleven-year old needs to deal with the emotional burden that she is now PHYSIOLOGICALLY ABLE TO CARRY A BABY?! What a crock of garbage! You're telling me I'm going to bleed in my pants once a month AND I still have to eat my peas because you said so? Like so much of adulthood, this failed to live up to the hype and just became a thing you do, like making a budget and not eating Skittles for breakfast. So when Zoe tells me that being a kid is lame, I will preach to deaf ears that her life is awesome and to enjoy her tampon-less existence.