Part One.

Age One: I'm laying in bed next to my sister watching her tiny black and white television in the dark, and I'm holding one of my baby bottles by the nipple so that the bottle is upside down. The nipple gives and bends and the bottle hits India in the head. She is really mad about it, and my mom spanks me. India still to this day, at the age of 37, will bring this up and say that my mom never did anything about it, suggesting that I'm the favorite child.

Age Two: I occasionally go to a daycare where there is a little boy named Kenneth who is blonde and cute and a couple of years older than me and I have a fluttery, intense crush on him. When I think of him now, he looks like Ricky Schroder from Silver Spoons.

Age Three: We move from Centerville to Leeds. When I look at the little white house as we're driving away from it, I see cats. Cats, everywhere. We're leaving them behind because they didn't really belong to us, just sort of adopted our house as a place to get food.

Age Four: I live across the street from a boy named Beau. We play together a lot. He smushes lightning bugs on his shirt and it horrifies me. I experience my first kiss with him, and subsequently we both get mono.

Age Five: I despise going to school, because my mother is my best friend and I hate being away from her. On more than one occasion she has to drag me into the school and pry me from her body and walk away as I cry and reach for her and the teacher has to hold me back. That same teacher will send me to get my first paddling from the principal when I get into a fight with another girl over the only bathroom stall with a lock on the door.*



*The idea to write this came from this entry in this blog.