My Scarred Childhood

Someone sent me an e-mail that contained this photo and it reminded me of a dark period from my childhood. When I started kindergarten, having an August (late) birthday, I was the youngest kid in the class. Because of this, I always felt intimidated by the other kids (especially the boys). This, combined with the fact that I was my mother’s first child, made it extremely difficult for me. My mom didn’t know what the fuck she was doing with me, specifically when it came to dressing me for school. She’d dress me like I was in the fucking JC Penny catalog, complete with velour shirts and four inch thick belts. It all came to a head on the day of the class picture. She insisted on dressing me in one of those gay-ass one piece outfits with short pants legs and a pair of Buster Brown shoes like the cheerleaders wore. With tears running down my face, I pleaded with her not to make me wear this Godawful outfit. I just knew the other boys would be wearing jeans and t-shirts and would terrorize my ass if they saw me in this goddamn turd of an outfit (it was brown).

Needless to say, she won and I reluctantly went to school that day for pictures. Sure enough, all the other boys were wearing jeans and/or Toughskins. If you look at the picture now, all the boys are standing there looking cool with their thumbs in their belt loops while poor little ol’ me is standing off to the side by myself with a pitiful look on my face. And, like I predicted, I was bullied for the duration of the year. Thankfully, my mom mercifully held me back for an extra year of kindergarten. I still give her shit about it to this day about how it scarred me for life. What does she do? She just laughs and laughs about it now.

By the time my youngest brother Mark came along, she didn’t really give a shit anymore. That is, until the day he came home from school and gave her the class picture that she had no idea had been taken (he was bad about giving her notes from school). I can’t begin to describe the satisfaction I got from watching the look of horror spread across her face as she stared at that picture and saw her youngest son sitting cross-legged in the front, wearing his red and black cowboy outfit with white fringe and brown cowboy boots. Revenge sure can be sweet…