“She’s ten, ten going on twenty.”
My naïve father was still convinced that this corny and awkward conversation starter would make any listener elbow the person next to them and say “good one, huh?” with no sarcasm.
I would look way up; confused as to if I was supposed to say something then. I would stand there, watched by whoever my dad had managed to drag over and attempt to make me their favorite little girl. By default, I would lift the thin edges of my corduroy or velvet or cotton dress, and trip over my feet to make my way to the back of his or my mother’s legs, hidden in safety from all of those people who were so much taller than me.
I used to think of adults as trees; towering, huge poles, suspended by only their own will power, overlooking the world in a way that us kids just couldn’t. We were mere flowers, innocent and looking the other animals in the eye. The grown-ups were the out of place ones, only able to see and interact with each other unless they felt like getting down on one knee and finding an exasperating grass stain on their work pants. As a child I could never comprehend why we were smaller. We were clearly smarter, cooler, prettier, and obviously deserving. As my perspective changed, it was almost as if some of the wiring in my brain completely un-plugged itself and it seemed I was all out of electrical tape.
In literally no time all, I went through some significant physical changes: my blond hair grew darker, my skinny waist skinnier, and above all, I ROCKETED in height. I became one of those trees before any of my friends had become holly bushes. At first, I thought that height gave me power. Gave me…authority; and it actually did. As a child I was looked up to mentally AND physically. New friends thought I was older and therefore, more mature which was now something cool, not weird. But as the wires in my head began to unplug themselves, I began to think of things a little different.
The main issue was this: I didn’t want more authority than my other friends. It was fun for a while, but then I realized that just like Ariel in The Little Mermaid who wanted to be human, I wanted to be recognized as myself rather than, “a very tall young girl”. Just like how the average pregnant teenager is referred to as “that pregnant teenager”, I felt as though I was a stand-out object instead of a stand-out individual.
I spent long nights awake in bed, clutching my sheets, resorting to fetal position in result of excruciatingly painful growing pains. I couldn’t help but pity myself; a child prodigy of something I couldn’t control and just didn’t want.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“She’s fifteen, fifteen going on fifty” I bet you can guess whose hopeful voice conveys this dramatic overstatement to a random person.
My father is an antiquarian of memories. He collects things because he’s afraid that everyone else will forget that it’s important unless it’s kept in a storage warehouse. He fears being alone with his own memories and nostalgia. He winks instead of saying hello which started scaring my female friends when they became teenagers. My father starts twitching before he starts crying, and starts speaking and doing before he starts thinking. He has salt-and-pepper-hair and wore high wasted jeans and wife-beater tank tops when he was dashing and in his twenties. He tried and tries so hard to help me overcome my fear of being different. He used to take me to the beach.
When you go to the beach, there are barnacle covered binoculars on the docks. If you put a quarter in a pair, the binoculars turn on and you can look out along the savory liquid glass, collapsing onto itself, you can watch the bird’s smooth glide along the warm ocean winds. You can watch the world from the perspective of two marble sized circles and the lingering smell of seaweed. This was how my growing up became. Not the seaweed or the marble sized circles, but it was like watching a family of pelicans up high in the wind. So high you have to crane your neck forward to watch them, and then having to dramatically jerk your head down when the birds take their fast dive into the water to scoop up a mouthful of jumping fish. The change of perspective happened so fast and was such a new, strange sensation, that it was almost frightening. I’m not ready. I’m not ready at age fifteen to look down at my own mother.
At this point, I have become Waldo on a page of black. An obsolete comment in a silent hall full of people, a whale at the Nature center. People see me from miles away while I watch hairlines. Dark brown, black, red, light brown, blond, white with little specks of dark brown at the roots, blue, sometimes green, short, long, gone. You look me in stomach, I look you in the hair line, that’s just how it is.
As a little girl, I was basically the epitome of cliché. I dreamt of being a princess and driving a red coverable buggy. I liked kittens more than breathing and breathing more than mushrooms. A devastating fact for me growing up was realizing that high heels, (pink to match my dress, of course) weren’t really going to be an option. The obsession started with Cinderella and her glass slipper. (I never understood why it was called a “slipper” when clearly it was a stiletto.) I dreamed of dropping my own glass stiletto at a magical ball, only to be discovered by the most hansom prince in the whole town who comes to find me because we fell in love at first glance.
I remember when I was ten or eleven or so, watching all of those good cop-bad cop movies with the irresistibly sexy female lead who secretly carried a gun in her guarder. That scene that painstakingly replayed itself in my mind: Limo. Red carpet. Two men get out and squint at the paparazzi’s flash cameras. Pause. Anticipation. Red stiletto. Flawless. One foot out. Pause. Anticipation. Gorgeous. And then cue the loud music as she struts her way to the entry of the building, man at each hip. This scene would be nothing with out the shoes. Is the idea that I stood by.
Several years later, when I realized how far the pelicans had dove down into that water and how fast, I noticed that I would never, ever get away with shoes like that. So my corrupted and self conscious little self started dreaming a little different. Underground shoes, for women who are just too tall. I imaged bulldozing my way through life, making a path everywhere I go, walking below everyone so that I could look others in the eye. They would be fashionable, of course. Practical. Life savers. Killers. I wasn’t comfortable with whom I was, and so I lay in bed at night devising schemes to kill that person and become someone else.
Sanity at a standstill, my own mind has been degrading me more than anyone else for the majority of my “of the charts” life. The wires have been cut. The wires have been cut and I’m making amends with those pelicans that have caused my neck a little bit of pain. I’ve embraced my inner Waldo, sung my obsolete comment in the silent hall, and nobody can stop me from being Cinderella if I want to be. Because she’s walking into this one barefoot.
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