In which Miss A Dons Her Birthday Suit

As a toddler, Miss A went through a nude phase. Most toddlers do, but her parents were still concerned. Should they hold off on kindergarten? There were concerns about Miss A stripping down in the middle of the afternoon, effectively changing “Show and Tell” forever.

She did everything naked (or, as her mom would pronounce in between giggles, “nekkid”). Playing Barbies, eating dinner, performing One Woman Only renditions of “The Nutcracker” and watching Bambi were all acceptable nude activities. Jerry Seinfeld once analyzed “good naked” and “bad naked” activities, the good being those that involved sex or sexy poses and the bad being things like clipping toenails. But for Miss A there was only one NAKED and it was…well it was a thing to see.

Her parents were pretty good about keeping the splendor indoors—there were no exhibitions at the Blockbuster, for example—but they could only do so much when it came to inviting visitors to the house. The shining memory of Miss A’s nudist years was most definitely the evening that her godparents’ parents came over to the house and Miss A, gloriously nude, pranced out into the living room, politely said “hello,” plopped down in her favorite red plastic chair and went to town on a bowl of macaroni and cheese. No big deal.

Sadly, Miss A grew up into a fully-clothed and mostly well-rounded adult. At least most of the time:

Grownup Interlude

From my Peace Corps service in Morocco, blog entry dated 4-29-2010

well folks, summer is just around the corner and i am knee-deep in preparations. by preparations i mean i have designated my house as a "no-pants zone."

A Venn diagram (see above) with one circle being "time spent in my house" and the other being "time spent wearing pants" would actually not even be a Venn diagram, just two mutually exclusive circles hangin out next to each other.

i'd just like to say how in awe i am of volunteers further south than me, because oh my god it's not even that hot here yet and i am already sweating balls minutes after i go outside. it's disconcerting that people keep asking me if this is my first summer in Morocco, then when I tell them it is, calling me "maskina" (poor thing).

In other news, I am either adapting to the way things work here or just getting really lazy, because I actually told a Moroccan to calm down today. He was spazzing about when I would be able to buy cookies for a party I am throwing on Saturday (ie, 50 hours from now) and I actually cut him off and told him he needed to chill out.

okayyyy bye

In which Miss A tries sports

A much shorter version of this story recently received an award. No big deal.

When Miss A turned five, her parents decided it was high time she got socialized. We guess this was a result of her weirdo toddler years (the nudist years) and her early inclination to just follow her big sister, the divine Miss M, around everywhere. Despite Miss A showing no particular aptitude for sports, her parents enrolled her in a co-ed kiddie tee-ball league.

“Co-ed” is a generous term—Miss A was plopped into an already formed team of boys. Burly, strapping five-year-old boys who ate raw bear meat as an afternoon snack. Boys who listened to Alice Cooper in the womb. Boys who smelled. We seem to remember a particular boy who threatened to punch Miss A in the face, just because she was a little girl. A Facebook search tells us that this boy never amounted to much.

Despite Miss A’s unsavory companions, she managed to handle the tee-ball season well enough—only pouting a little bit before each game, politely drinking her juice box without drawing special attention and befriending the one boy on the team that was nice to her, who probably was gay. We don’t know. We can’t remember his last name to research him. Anyway, the point is that for the majority of the tee-ball season, Miss A was able to put on a brave (adorable) face. She was a pretty terrible tee-ball player, but at least snacks were involved.

Then came a game day that changed everything. Forever. Literally, the course of Miss A’s life was changed. Forever.

It was a hot spring day. Miss A was next up at bat. Sitting next to the team’s horde of clementines, she spit out the rest of her chewing tobacco, then stood up and waddled over to home plate, looking over her shoulder to see where her mom and dad were.

They waved. Everything seemed normal. She thought, in a brain remarkably well-formed for someone so young and small, that she was almost done with this stupid game. All she needed to do was swing at the tee seven or eight times until the umpire mercifully let her go sit back down and play with blades of grass by herself.

Having arrived at the tee, little Miss A raised her bat and prepared for some humiliation. She swung, and—hit the ball? What? What does one do when that happens? Up to this point, Miss A hadn’t paid much attention to tee-ball rules.

Confused, she watched the ball fly up and over the tiny mitts of her opponents. Was she out yet? Should she wait until they catch it?

At this point she realized the crowd, and specifically her parents, were going apeshit. Everyone was screaming and pointing at first base. Some were clapping. Why would they do that? It had been such a difficult day and all Miss A wanted to do was go home and have a juicebox.

And so it was that, after hitting her first and only home run, Miss A sat down on home base and started crying.

Not very long afterward, her mom enrolled her in ballet lessons.

In which I declare a purpose

I'm trying something new. With this blog I'm going to revisit stories from my life as a strange child. I note that these stories will be "mostly true," because I plan to take some liberties with my memories with respect to timeline and exact quotes. Don't worry, however; the main event of each story will be absolutely something that I did without regret. As an example of a story to come, yes I absolutely did drown my sister's Christmas toy face-down in the bathroom sink. Yes, I was about nine years old. She retaliated proportionally and swiftly, don't worry.

I've decided to refer to my childhood self as "Miss A." This is a nickname my ex-step-father gave me when I was 11 or 12 or so. It just seemed fitting, and I want to try to distance my real self from the slightly skewed reality of the stories to come.

I'm also planning to insert "grown up interludes" here and there with the intent of showing how the crazy things I did as a little kid continue to affect my adult life. Stay tuned.