I Remember Everything (A Shy Kid Looks Back)

Alright lovelies, before we get started on the riveting stories I'm about to share with you I want to make a few comments on the outfit. 1: yes I realize that it is summer and I am wearing a trench COAT and JEANS but 2: I've been DYING to wear the aforementioned trench coat and it started out as a cloudy day so I took full advantage of it and 3: that was basically it, there wasn't really a three. Lets get to it then. As a child I was always shy. No, that's a lie. I wasn't really a shy child until my family and I moved to the states when I was four. When I was two years old going to school in Guatemala I was perfectly sociable. I had my small group of friends, one of whom was a rather chubby child who I shared 90% of my lunch with at her request. (Understandably my mother was greatly annoyed by this.) I think the shyness started due to being thrown into a new country in which I understood nothing. I started keeping to myself more, not that the other 4 year old preschoolers didn't try to talk to me. Bless their little souls. Their attempts just weren't very successful since I couldn't really talk back and often times it felt more like they were talking AT me rather than TO me. Anyway, that's were the shyness began. My childhood shyness is most evident to me in four stories.

ONE:
When kindergarten rolled around I was pretty much fluent so language wasn't a real big issue anymore but my shyness had already kicked in. Sure I talked to my fellow five year olds and we were buds, but that's just it we were BUDS not FRIENDS. For my entire kindergarten year I elected to spend my entire recess playing with my older sister and her cool older kid friends. Which, now that I think of it kind of made me the bad a$* kindergartener (that sounds like it would be the prequel to that movie "The Kindergarten Cop"). Playing with my older sister required sneaking off from the "little" kids playground over into the "big" kids playground without getting caught. I never got caught. You might wonder why I chose to hangout with my sister's friends instead of making my own. Well, the answer is simple. My sister's friends spent an entire hour of recess cooing over me calling me an "adorable baby" while teaching me how to make mud pies. Who wouldn't want to make mud pies with people who think you're an adorable baby? Nobody. In fact, I want to do that right now.

TWO: In the subsequent years my shyness was cemented in by my transformation into Asian girl genius. What is this you ask? Well, in order to answer this I have to inform you that I'm about to get a little stereotypical and maybe even a lil bit racist. You've been warned. You know how most Asian kids are school junkies who excel in anything academic, are obsessed with getting perfect grades, and respect their elders almost to the point of creepiness? That was me. At least from the ages of 7-13. Not that I stopped caring about academics after that it's just that after that I started getting a little more "stick it to the man".

THREE: During those years I had my small intimate group of friends who I would spend my recess hours with imagining up all sorts of weird little games and co-writing novels that we just knew in our little hearts would be the next Harry Potter in terms of success. Then 6th grade rolled around right along side with hormones, early signs of puberty for most of my fellow classmates (Myself not included. The Boob Fairy was never kind to me), and the start of "the popular kids". I was not a popular kid. I had BIG hair, no gifts from the Boob Fairy, I read books for *gasp* fun, I was good at school, I was quiet and when I spoke I said weird things, and I dressed so fashion forward that my outfits were deemed weird by most of the 6th grade population. Back then white leather moccasins were my staple, loafers where my go to shoes, and patterned skinny jeans or well tailored pants were my wardrobe favorites. Everybody hated it. I dressed like a 40 year old in an 11 year old body. (Thank goodness moccasins, loafers, and printed pants actually came in style now because now I can say I was just ahead of the fashion crowd. [; ) All the other little girls dressed in denim mini skirts or short shorts with baby pink spaghetti strap tops. While they were committed to "fun", "flirty" outfits I was committed to quality items that looked expensive and "put together".  You'd think I was going into work at some fancy New York office rather than 6th grade.

FOUR: Now, please don't get offended by what I'm about to say next and pardon my French but it needs to be said...there's always that one douche kid. We all know it. That one kid that proves that, yes, children can be douches. That one kid that's the "funny guy" but is really the "jerk butt guy". For me this kid was Josiah (his name has been changed to protect his douchey identity). To be honest, his jerky attitude toward me wasn't unrequited. Believe me when we spoke, which wasn't often because we generally tried to avoid each other like the plague, his snarky attitude and snappy comments didn't go unanswered without a good jab or two from me. It all started on the first day of 6th grade. We were standing next to each other in line waiting to be let inside. Now, before I tell you what happened next I have to inform you that from my early years of life up until I was about 11 I had a very narrow understanding of race. I just naturally assumed that if you were tan or on the darker side like my family and me or black then you just had to be from some other country. I had no concept of the term African-American. I know I had been taught a little bit about it but it just hadn't sunken in. Josiah happened to be black. I'm sure you can see where this is going. So, standing there in line I asked him where he was from. He looked at me and told me that he was from Utah. I then asked him, "okay, but where are your parents from?" Big mistake. He looked at me with an expression of sheer contempt and told me that his parents too were from Utah. It's a good thing I stopped there and didn't say what my young naive mind was thinking next which was, "well then why are you black?" I wasn't trying to be racist, I was just trying to understand and strike up a conversation with my belief that we both had being foreign in common. In my shy attempt to make a friend my inadequate mouth spluttered out probably the worst thing it possibly could and instead, I made the kid hate me and from then on it was just downhill mutual dislike. The Guatemalan Girl vs. The Black Kid.

{H&M: Polka-dot button up top; Gap: trench coat similar, jeans similar, Tanger Outlets: white oxfords similar}

Anyway, there are my tales of a shy kid. I was ridiculous. I know. You'll be happy to know that my shyness did eventually ebb away by the beginning of 9th grade but that's an "Am I Even Funny" story for another day. What was your elementary school experience like? Email me or make my day and comment below!

Much Love!

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