A Rambling Autobiography on Childhood (Or the Lack Thereof)

I coughed, sniffled, vomited and sweated through my first birthday, and stepped outside only to blow bubbles and try to appreciate the mellow April air. My throat still gags emptily when I recall the stinkbug that buzzed into my mouth from its shelter in my bike helmet. I learned to ride a bike twice, because I forgot after the first time. I never wore tutus or dresses. When a field trip fell on my birthday, I donned a paper crown and gave my favorite brown fuzzy jacket to a shivering friend. My family never visited the beach. North Dakota plains became my adventure. The food I ate was never (and has never been) the same as the cuisine on everyone else’s plates; I fed strictly off of nuggets and smiley fries. For that reason, I never got to attend a sleep-away camp. Racing with the boys at recess was my fame and fortune until they collectively decided that girls had no place amongst their ranks. At age nine, in the sweltering heat of summer, I plopped down on the toilet and found my first period brown and minimal in my underwear. Dad stopped liking me after that. But Mom continued to tie my shoes until I was thirteen, so that made it halfways okay. I cried in bed when sleep evaded me. I ate my sister’s banana flavored chapstick. I made bookmarks with a friend who never brushed her hair and believed she was a fairy; we knocked on doors in her apartment complex that rank of urine and sold them for a quarter without batting an innocent eye at the many men who opened their doors. I avoided owning hamsters and fish for fear they might die. In a chlorinated swimming pool, I watched a peculiar neighbor girl from France tug down her bikini bottoms as the July sun shined down on her strange and naked glory. I kissed a girl with a boy’s haircut in a dirty school bathroom when the ends of my hair were dyed blue. I discovered the behavioral and emotional highs and lows that a child pumped prematurely with hormones can achieve, and I never learned how to be young.

Anna Louise Steig is a Jewish writer and student at Shepherd University in West Virginia.