Dark hair. Pretty. We got to know each other while swinging on the wood playground structure at Sunset Elementary School. It was first grade. We were six. I felt so foreign, socially. Everyone else had met each other in Kindergarten the year before. I had stayed home - and I would have been educated at home for the rest of my life, if I'd been given the choice. But I wasn't given the choice, so there I was...
I remember the shock and dismay the first - and only - time I wore a dress on Friday. Apparently Friday was not just Friday. It was Friday-flip-up-day. This I discovered after I ran from the playground in tears, pulling my skirt down tightly against my legs as the boys laughed.
I forget which day was kiss chase day. Whichever day of the week it was, I happened to be carrying my hand-me-down metal Star Wars lunch box. X-Wing fighter on the front.
