Second grade

Here's my second grade school picture. Okay, I did tell you not to expect "beautiful". Also not pretty, and sadly, not even cute. Now my hair is in French braids. I still have ribbons but that's just because it is Picture Day. I'm missing a few teeth so I'm trying to keep my mouth closed when I smile. What you can't see are the knees. My knees were always scraped, scabbed or bleeding. I was always either falling down or being knocked down at recess.

We had recess outside in the school yard, which was covered in gravel. (We didn't have a gym or physical education.) Teachers took turns supervising us outside during recess. Some of them taught us games like "A-tisket, A-tasket" and "Red Rover, Red Rover". Red Rover was exciting and when I was chosen I ran as hard as I could, but almost always couldn't break through and ended up falling down.

We played other games on our own, like "Crack-the-whip". If there was a big kid in front, the whip got really fast and I would spin out and fall down. In the Spring we had a long jump rope and sang "Bluebells, Cockle Shells, Eevy, Ivy, Over". When the beat went really "hot" I couldn't keep up with it and my feet would get tangled in the rope and I'd fall down.

All the games seemed to involve me falling down.

There were teeter-totters, big slabs of boards on iron frames - but you needed a friend to play on them. There was a spinning around platform we called a merry-go-round - and it was usually full of shrieking little kids while one of the big kids raced madly around making it go faster and faster. Then the big kid would jump on and hang off the side while the thing spun out of control and everyone got really dizzy.

There were tall, tall swings - the frames were maybe 20 feet high. They swang way way up. The big kids swang straight out from the frame, far above our heads, trying to loop all the way over the frame. That was scary. The idea was to swing as high as you could and then jump off. I could never jump off from very high up. And, of course, when I did jump off I always fell on my knees and cut them up.

For years I had dreams about those swings. In my dream I swang higher than I ever dared go in real life. Then I would let go of the chains and jump. Instead of falling, I would stay up in the air. I could swim through the air just like water, and I'd swim above the playground looking down on all the other kids.

Lots of time on the playground I wandered around by myself. The girls who had best friends would link arms and walk around chatting. The boys would race wildly around playing some mysterious game that involved chasing and pretend shooting. I made up stories in my head and I thought about things. Once I remember wondering if people could feel through their clothes. I went around sneaking up behind kids and trying to touch their clothes very lightly to see if they noticed. They usually noticed. I wasn't very subtle. I was beginning to get a reputation for being strange.