Devonne Brown

“Your ideas are weird. We don’t want to play with you anymore,” said first grader Selene to first grader me. We were writing a script for a play everyone didn’t know they already knew the words to. They were such babies.

I figured the first grade debacle was just frustration over writing the script, and everyone had forgotten about it. Second grade was uneventful, I was busy reading anyway. 

Then third grade hit as hard as first grade. “We don’t want you on our side anymore. You’ve got too many strange ideas. You think too much. You want to do too much. Go play somewhere else.” I don’t remember an incident that sparked the ostracism, I just took their word for it, and moved to a different lunch table with a good book. I read and ate at the same time. 

I kept my nose clean for the fourth and fifth grades. Nobody bothered me. I sat quietly reading or writing most of the time. I was the fat girl in school. Nobody likes the fat girl anyway. I got that, I didn’t like it, but I got it. I also got two bags of chips everyday at lunch and crunched them up and ate the munchie dust. The chips made me feel better.

“We just can’t take you anymore,” said Gina, the leader of the clique I found myself in the middle of in sixth grade. It was glorious to have a bunch of friends to sit and laugh with at lunch and recess. “You have too many strange ideas. We’ve all talked about it. You can’t hang with us anymore.”

This time I avoided the lunchroom altogether and ate in the classroom with the other losers. Lois the insipid, see through white girl with light blue glasses, and Larry, the boy who dared to be dirt poor. No one spoke. We were afraid we’d reject each other.

Then there was summer at home.

“How many eggs did you use for those scrambled eggs?” Dad was mad when he saw the fluffy mass in the skillet. I’d watched Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, make scrambled eggs with water instead of milk. He showed me how to lift and tilt the skillet so the wet eggs drifted under the cooked bits. The eggs rose higher and higher with each lift. Perfection.

“Only one,” I answered. I was so proud. He didn’t believe me for one second.  One egg couldn’t have that much mass to it. It looked to him like I was being the greedy, gluttonous, wasteful kid that made me fat in the first place.

“I hate it when you put on airs,” said Dad. “You’ve got too many strange ideas in your head, I wish you were normal.”

I wished that too, and always wondered, why wasn’t I?