dorkfysh's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- history I try to remember what I was like when I was 10. We had just moved to Northern Minnesota from Southern California and I felt like I had moved to another planet. I had spent many summers in that little town. My mom would send me off to stay with my grandmother and my uncle in the little white house a block from Ice Lake and across the street from the armory. We would go out at night with our flashlights covered in red bandannas and dig up nightcrawlers and then get up early and go fishing at the dam. I would go swim at the little beach or would get wagonloads of books from the library and read them in the tent we set up in the backyard. Living there full time was less than idyllic. I was a curiosity. I was from a place that most of the other kids had only seen on TV. I kept quiet and read my books and ate lunch alone. The first winter was horrifying. When the sun reflected off the snow I was rendered blind and was afraid of walking to school because I couldn't see where I was going. Nobody believed me. I refused to go play outside at recess because I couldn't see anything and would spend the entire time doing extra work from the big SRA box in the corner of the room. When I finished that I worked on a geography series that I found hidden in a file cabinet. I don't remember having any good friends. There was a girl named Shannon with huge haunted green eyes and a Dorothy Hamill haircut. She wore the same baggy overalls every day. I once went to her dank little apartment behind the railroad tracks after school and her mom's boyfriend made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Shannon was afraid of him, too. We stood outside and poked sticks into the dirt until he got in his truck and drove away. We went inside and drank Kool-Aid and peanut butter out of the jar until her mother screamed from the other room that I needed to get the fuck out of there. Not long after that she stopped coming to school and I never heard from her again. I would pretty much go to school and come home to an empty house. I would make toast or instant rice and watch the Matinee Money Movie and do my homework. I would collect rocks and appliance boxes from the furniture store aross the street and make villages in the basement. My mom worked two jobs and had a new married boyfriend that was paying our rent. I would generally only see her when she came home to make dinner then she would leave again. I picture myself at 10. A little girl with long long hair. Quiet. Bookish. Lonely. Isolated. Kids would see me coming and would whisper to each other and point while I walked by and pretended not to notice. Childhood is a bitch. 12:12 p.m. - April 19, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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