All that Sparkles

When I was little, I absolutely loved sparkly things. I collected any and all sparkly things and put them in little boxes. The list included but was not limited to: puffy stickers with glitter (are you a child of the 80s too? If so, you’ll understand about puffy stickers); little plastic rhinestones that I picked off things I shouldn’t, like shirts and jewelry; broken necklaces; pieces of colored glass and plastic; and buttons. I would sit cross-legged in my room and dump my treasures on the floor and stare at them possessively, like a dragon. A ferocious little 9-year-old dragon.

My parents were constantly ticked off at me when they discovered some sparkly thing I’d taken (or broken). Totally unfair, I know. For my birthday one year, my mom gave me a little red rhinestone ring, and I pried open the setting and added the stone to my collection. I may or may not have done the same thing to some of mom’s jewelry. Maybe I also pulled the fake diamond buttons off one of her dresses, and I possibly even took one of my dad’s cufflinks that had abalone shell embedded in it (or something equally shiny). I’m not sure if I really looked at these transgressions as punishable offenses at the time. I mean, I felt so happy when I was looking at my little treasures that I didn’t feel that it was fair for my folks to be upset that I had simply moved the sparkly thing from once location to a better one. You understand.

Mom collected Swarovski crystal animals that were gifts from a good friend of hers (he may have been a former lover, actually – but that’s another story altogether). They were beautiful. If sparkly things caught my eye because they reflected light in some pleasing spectrum that spoke to me, then these creatures with their many facets of cut-glass fabulousness were like beacons lighting my way home. To thievery. I would snatch them, one by one, when she wasn’t looking (which was often – but that’s also another story), huddle under the table, and pry off the tiny crystal eyeballs, ears, or tails. Oh, and wings. Those delicate wings on the majestic, glimmering crystal swans – those were lovely. And that flower on the bunny! SO. SPARKLY. Whichever pieces I thought I could capture in a moment when no one was around, those would find their way right into my sweaty little fist and onto the operating table. I’d then replace the poor creatures on their lonely little shelf facing in whatever direction would make their amputations less obvious from across the room.

Aside from loving things that sparkled, I also loved having friends. Well, I loved the idea of having friends, none of which were in my possession at any time through early elementary school. There was one girl I had sleepovers with at some point during that time, but I recall her telling me her mother didn’t like me. Really, I’m not sure what I was supposed to do with that.

Anyway, at some point (in third grade? Or maybe fourth grade? The exact year is fuzzy), these two loves merged in my brain – which, as we recall from the last episode, was awesomely creative, though not accomplished in forward-thinking – and crystallized into an excellent scheme worthy of any stupid 80s sitcom plot. You see, we had this (weirdly out-of-place, ostentatious) crystal chandelier hanging over the formal dining room table. I coveted it. When you turned the fake plastic candles on that served as the light source, it was like a kaleidoscope of light shooting in every direction – like a disco ball, but softer and more romantic. So, like a disco ball… in a hotel room. I don’t know, you get the idea. And then it came to me one day: I’d just take some of those. I mean, who’d miss them, right? How often do you look at a light fixture?

Speaking as grown-up Desiree for a second, may I say, I look at my light fixtures quite often. Little Desiree had no idea the noticeable-ness of household items to adults – especially the expensive (weirdly out-of-place, ostentatious) ones.

My cousin Katy will thank me for cutting her out of this photo. You're welcome, Katy.

So, one night, I climbed on top of the dining room table (with my dirty feet, yup, right up there where you eat and everything, smearing that foot dirt all around), unhooked several chains of crystals, and absconded with them up to my room. I (of course) kept the prettiest ones for myself, but I brought the rest to school and handed them out to other kids. I don’t recall what my criteria was for who got some of these, nor do I remember what I said to the recipients, but the overall gist of it was: here’s a sparkly thing. I love them the best. Will you be my friend?

Needless to say, I did not come away from that plan with any lasting friendships, as far as I can tell. (Please raise your hand if you got one of my crystals and still like me, 30+ years later.) In fact, with my awesome powers of hindsight, I realize that I probably just gave those kids one more reason to think I was totally weird (and pathetic). I vaguely recall, though, being super proud of myself and VERY GLAD that I pulled off the brilliant heist without getting caught.

But of course, I got caught. It took my mom a few days to notice the lopsided, romantic (denuded) disco ball, but as soon as she did, she knew which dragon had done the deed. Now, normally I was a girl who could take her licks, but this time Mom came totally out of left field and made the craziest, most horrible demand you could imagine – she wanted the pieces back. All of them. It didn’t matter to her that it was supremely embarrassing to ask the kids to return my stupid gifts; nor did it matter to her that it would make me look incredibly loser-y. (If that’s not a word, it should be.) Shocker: we didn’t get back all the pieces. Another shocker: going to school over the next several days was so, so awful.

Well, what lesson did we learn from this story? I spent these last hours trying to look at this from grown-up Desiree perspective, and really, I don’t know what I would have said to little Desiree at that moment. But I know how sad and embarrassed she felt. As a mother myself now, I think I’d give her a hug and know exactly where she was coming from – anyone desperate enough to try to buy friends really needs a hug. I mean, I’d totally take back my awesome, fake-diamond buttons she stole and sew those bitches right back on my dress – but my heart would also break for her a little. I definitely think all these cringy experiences (believe me, friends, there are many more in my bag o’ history, don't you worry) helped me learn empathy later in life. But would I trade a little empathy for a few friends for little Desiree? Maybe.

Let's Get This Party Started

Welcome to my first blog post! Warning: it will be long. LONG. Ask any editor I’ve ever had.

My 16-year-old son, Alex, tells me blogs are passé. Which is fine by me. I’m just gonna carry on here, Doogie Howser-style, safe in the knowledge that he’ll never read it (or even know how to find it, most likely). Nor will anyone beyond my 11 or so closest Facebook friends (another electronic tool for the elderly, according to Alex), who will read this because that’s what one does in this age of Corona (virus, not beer): we pass the time by distracting ourselves from our fear that we will suffer and die of this, or our loved ones will, and that those of us who don’t die are completely screwed thanks to the looming Depression, the likes of which we haven’t seen for almost a hundred years. But don’t worry, this blog is not about that monster in the corner. Instead, I’ll be writing about cringey moments from my childhood. Other people’s awful moments are fun to watch, if they don’t result in death (this is why I used to watch “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” and that show about Honey Boo Boo back when I had cable years ago), and I’m glad to distract others with my own mortification. I’ve also kinda wondered if these moments did anything for me or to me as I grew into an adult – I’ve never actually sat down and given it a good old “deep look,” so I think now I will. Because Coronavirus.

Crap, that would have been a better blog title - Because Coronavirus. Eh, whatever.

Stupidly long disclaimer about memory: I have an awful memory. I’m not even kidding. Some people say that and don’t mean it, but I really do, and anyone who knows me well will attest to it. My friend and former co-worker, Amber, used to be concerned that I had some weird, ultra-early onset dementia and since then, I have not miraculously recovered. So, any memories of mine contained in these posts are most likely riddled with inaccuracies. In fact, all human memory is this way – my hubby has repeatedly over the last 18 years told me this story (he tells the same stories over and over all the time; luckily I can’t remember for crap so they are always at least somewhat new to me) about a demonstration one of his law school professors did that showed how flawed memory is in witnesses, even minutes after an event. I don’t recall the details (ha, ha, I know, right?), but the gist is that we all recall things differently, but yet we are adamant about the correctness of our individual recollection. All that matters here is that, if these stories I put down are how I remember them, then this is how they were. If you are someone who participated in one of the historical moments I’m describing, and you remember it differently – good for you! Write your own damn blog.

So, let’s start with one of my first cringey memories. This was second grade, so that would be, what? About 1986 or so (above is a photo of little me around that time). I don’t remember what time of year it was (I really don’t remember a lot of my childhood, honestly – it’s just a bunch of little balls of memory in my head all strung together on thin ropes of time of varying lengths, like a candy necklace that has most of its candy crunched off) so, let’s call it fall. It’s a sunny morning just before school starts, and we’re all playing out on the blacktop. All the usual 80s childhood stuff is going on: kids bouncing that ubiquitous red ball that hurt like hell when you played dodgeball with it and it hit you; kids hanging out on top of the hopscotch grid that no one ever actually used because hopscotch is stupid; kids huddled together looking at Garbage Pail Kids cards like they were something super naughty because they had pictures of boogers or gore on them; kids hanging upside-down on metal monkey bars; and the naughtier kids off whispering bad words together over on the giant tractor tire that’s half buried in the dirt (can you believe adults actually thought we’d think buried trash was a cool playground addition? That was the 80s for you) in the hopes the teacher wouldn’t come over and see what they were doing (spoiler: the teacher didn’t give a rat’s ass).

Speaking of the teacher didn’t care – I had to go to the bathroom. When you’re a kid and you have to go to the bathroom, you’re really in a conundrum. You have to weigh your need to relieve yourself with the often greater desire not to draw attention to yourself by walking alone to the teacher to ask, then walking alone to the door and down the hall, then walking back an interrupting whatever is happening to settle back into the group. The whole time you’re thinking everyone is looking at you and whispering about you – and sometimes you’re right. But even when you’re not, the fear is real. Especially in my case, because kids didn’t like me. I was weird. Even when I was eight, I knew this to be true. I didn’t dress like the other kids, because I had zero idea how to match colors and no clue what styles were popular because I didn’t read Seventeen or wherever it was an eight-year-old in a tiny town was supposed to look before the age of the internet in order to know what was cool. That was strike one. Strike two was that I was an outsider. Most kids were from families that had grown up in town; it was seriously like Mayberry there. I’m not kidding. It was a small town in Virginia, and people talked with a rural accent Just like Sherriff Andy Taylor. People there raised livestock and canned things and loved watching the tractor pull at the county fair. This is not a lifestyle I fit into, even though I tried. And my parents were from out of town – in fact, my mom was from out of the country and talked with a funny accent, so she might as well have been a space alien.

So, there I was, space alien spawn in my crappy, un-cool clothes, and I had to pee. I worked my way over to whatever teacher was close by and I asked her if I could go in and use the bathroom; she said no. I’m sure she had a really good reason – it was almost time to go inside was probably her logic, but I don’t remember. I tried the standard whine: “PleeeeeEEEEEEasssee?” But no dice. Teachers are immune to pleading. So are mothers. My reward was probably something along the lines of, “You should have gone before you came to school.” I don’t remember exactly. But, no means no in school.

I was a girl who sometimes had bathroom accidents, even when I was old enough to know better. Looking back as an adult, I wonder if these problems were brought on by stress (or whatever counted as stress for a second grader). I had just left private school and started public school that year, and I had trouble adjusting. I had been attending a Montessori school outside of Washington D.C. before I came to public school, which was probably strike three for me with my new peers. The school I had attended before didn’t really have a lot of rules, and all the kids there were standard NoVa kids (you either know what that means or you don’t, but it definitely means something) and they were NOT the same as Mayberry kids.

So, little me decided to sit down on a sideways cinderblock in a row of sideways cinderblocks that edged the blacktop so that I would be close to the lineup area when it was time to go inside. This would theoretically have been a good idea if not for two things: 1) a boy I liked was standing with some friends of his nearby and they noticed me sitting there alone (because being a kid alone near any group of other kids is really just asking for trouble), and 2) the hollow side of a cinderblock when you sit on it feels JUST like a potty. All these things I realized too late, and the pee started flowing – a LOT of it.

My desperate wish was to have the cinderblock hole just keep my dirty secret for me, but sadly, physics isn’t sympathetic to the feelings of little weird girls, and cinderblocks are heartless bastards. The pee started to trickle underneath the block and spill onto the blacktop.

“EEEEWW!” one of the kids in the group near me squealed. “What IS that?” The kid was, of course, pointing to the spreading liquid.

I will say, little me was really inventive – maybe it came from playing alone a lot – and I came up with a brilliant idea on the spot. I put my hands behind my back and yelled, “I spilled my water! I SPILLED my WATER!!”

Clearly, that logic was not going to fly with the little Sherlock Holmeses of the playground. “Oh yeah? Show us the cup!” That was the gist of the demands they were yelling at me. Of course, I couldn’t do that, as the invisible cup would absolutely have to stay behind my back forever. I hadn’t really had time to think through this plan beyond my initial flash of brilliance.

And let me just say, pee smells. And a lot of pee smells – a lot. So, I was sitting there with my hands behind my back, smelling my pee and watching it creep out towards other kids, and this moment even now seems like it lasted a hundred years. I’m 41 years old, and I still remember what it feels like to have a scratchy cinderblock rubbing against my tights and how uncomfortable it is to hold my hands behind my back for what felt like forever. Of course, the Sherlock Holmeses weren’t backing down with their jeers. Because why would they? They were eight and this was a hilariously horrible situation.

And then it was time to line up. After that, there was some combination of laughing and pointing, plus me crying and holding a teacher’s hand to go into the building, so I didn’t avoid my dreaded walk of shame anyway. That’s where my memory ends.

So, what did grownup me learn from rehashing this moment? I was hoping I’d write my way into some kind of great life lesson, like at the end of G.I. Joe cartoons. I don’t know if that happened here. I will say, though, that I have empathy for people who find themselves in that kind of embarrassing situation. If you pee yourself, not only will I totally back you up about your invisible cup, I will hold your hand and we can go to the bathroom together and clean you up. But I think most grownups would do that – even the now-grown Sherlock Holmeses – don’t you think so? I hope that’s true, because one of the issues that MS can cause (a disease I happen to have) is incontinence, and I’m already headed in that general direction. I know, maybe that’s way TMI, but let’s be real here. Being a human is gross and embarrassing sometimes, even for the best of us. Maybe a lesson I learned is that I don’t need an invisible cup.

In any case, I’m glad we had this time to avoid thinking about the you-know-what together.