Feeling: Pretty
Listening to: I'm humming... 'Don't ever lose that light in your eyes'
Reading/Watching: Wanda, 'cause she bought me a soda.

I do not intend to babble away.

I wonder, though. From birth 'til about third grade, I was a scary little kid. I threw myself into things, no matter how dangerous or stupid, because I wanted to be able to say I did it. My mom was terrified that a kidnapper would come up to me and I'd just take his hand and walk off with my new friend. I was scary because I was scared of nothing.

Everyone I knew loved me, my friends were simply people that shared Barbies with me, and I was confident in myself, because at that age you're still cute enough that adults will humor what you have to say and think it's interesting.

I wonder what would have happened if that never changed. (Everybody does, I know, but allow me to be trite.) I wonder who I'd be if I woke up every day still sure that every person I met would be a friend and every thing I did would be cute or clever and no one would be snickering behind my back (or to my face).

I should think about that when I first meet someone. I should remember that when I'm nervous. But instead, shaking a new hand, behind my smile I'm walking on that little asphalt sidewalk that circled the playground, singing The Little Mermaid and pretending to be deaf so I wouldn't go off key when those vicious little boogers on the monkey bars yelled something rude.

It takes a long time knowing someone before I'm not doing that anymore. A long time before I can drive to meet a friend for dinner without hearing my fourth-grade lab partner say "You're ugly, and you fart all day." A long time before I could sing in public without expecting someone to poke their head around the corner and snort, "Show-off."

There's a picture album at home that I went through last time I was there. It had been maybe five or six years since I last spent a good hour looking at pictures from fourth and fifth grade. I used to be too scared to. I'll be the first to say I was an ugly little girl. And it always made me want to cry because I'd look at those dark picture eyes, and the smile never quite reached them. The face would stretch upward, but every time in those eyes I'd still see a sparkle missing. It always made me want to cry, and that's why I couldn't look.

But this time I went on, flipping through, and for maybe three or four years, the eyes were dead in the smiling face. But then something weird happened: the sparkle returned. I think it was around sophomore or junior year in highschool. My smile was real again, not scared, not forced, not thin.

I got really pretty once that happened. It was nice to realize it.

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