The Spy Who Didn't Love Me

I thought that this time around, after a long break, you deserve to learn a little bit about me.  In order for me to better myself by doing this, I’m going to look back upon something from my childhood.  This is something that isn’t necessarily a great story but it helped to shape the person that I am.  Everything that happens to a person helps to create who they become.  That’s how life works.  So here’s looking back at something from long ago, though really not long when looked at relative to a lot of people.

Twelve years back, I was eight years old.  I was in the third grade.  I was just a little third grade pipsqueak going about my life with not a care in the world.  It’s a wonder children don’t live under the same stress as you live under as you age.  If I could go back to then, the problems in life would look like nothing.  My biggest problem would be waiting for recess.  Oooeeee.  That’s miniscule compared to a lot of stuff.  When I was eight, I wouldn’t have cared about Joplin and the devastating tornado.  I would have cared about which team I was on for kickball.

It was Valentine’s Day.  I don’t remember how it happened.   Maybe it was my fascination for technology.  Maybe it was a feeble attempt at independence when I was eight.  It didn’t work, but it was an attempt.  I had decided to make my Valentine’s cards on our computer.  It was fun stuff in my mind.  I got to pick colours, put in pictures, play with special text styles.  Amazingly fun things to do with the mind you have at a young age.  Then my mom stepped in.

My mom decided that the message I was putting in there wasn’t good enough for a Valentine’s card.  It was the same sort of message that you’d find in a Scooby Doo, Ghostbusters, Bugs Bunny, or any other card.  She changed it.  She’s not entirely to blame though.  But I didn’t know any better.

I went to school the next day and handed out the cards to everyone.  And I mean everyone.  All the kids handed them to everyone.  Something about self-esteem was the reason, I think.  Kind of like a participation ribbon.  We all got the same amount, they were all from the same people.  It was simple.

At recess, a girl walked up to me with her friends.  They started making fun of me because of what was in the Valentine’s card.  I was being picked on by the plastics.  And I’m a guy.  That’s how bad it got.  It’s all due to my mom’s message in the card.  What was it?  I don’t remember.  I just remember the consequence of what it said.  I also remember that the girl who got the card lived down the street from me.  Woohoo.

I don’t remember when, but that girl left my school at some point.  I think it might have been right after grade three.  I never saw her again.  This memory sticks with me.  The memory of being picked on by the mean girls.  I had no Tim Meadows to defend me with a baseball bat.  I just had to hold myself together and toughen up.

Life can hit you in ways you never expected.  Certain things can stay with you.  Others just fade away.  However, they both add together to create the person that you are.  They make you stronger, they tear you down.  You roll with it until the bitter end.  And with that, I bid you adieu for now.  I shall return in “Goldenmind.”