The Not-So-Snow Day in September

It was a Tuesday morning in September.  Third grade had just started barely two weeks earlier and I was getting used to my new teacher, Mrs. Crowe.  She had long red curls and big brown eyes. When she talked, any topic she brought up was bright and cheery. She made math sound like the happiest thing in the world.  Walking around as we worked on our workbooks, enthusing about how “math was the key to everything” and telling us if “we could multiply and divide, you could do anything” in that happy, cheery voice of hers.  Some days, I believed what she said to be true.

Out of the Box

As a young girl, I spent the majority of my time dirtying myself up in the woods of Wisconsin.  I loved playing make believe, cutting hair off my Barbie dolls, or jumping off the pier and into Lake Geneva.  I was not shy to being dirty, nor was I shy to getting rough with the boys.

From a baby to age fourteen, the question of love and who we fall in love with never really bothered me much.  As far as I knew during my grade school existence, I’d crushed on a few boys.  A few boys had crushed on me.  And of course, there were one or two girls who seemed to have feelings for me, but as far as I knew, I didn’t seem to like them back the same way.  Over all of that, I played on two hockey teams, so the idea of trying to date was totally off my radar.  So I placed myself in the first box: straight.  Straight as an arrow.  Or so I thought.