alycewilson | Entries tagged with nonfiction

This is my entry for Week 4 of LJ Idol (therealljidol, Three Strikes season. This week's topic is "The axe forgets; the tree remembers."

I was serving hash browns when a cheerful voice boomed, "Alice? Is it you?" I glanced up and couldn't place the nondescript person in front of me.

"I'm Duffy Manfred*," he announced. "We went to school together in fifth grade."

How could I forget? He'd made me miserable that school year.

Every school dance, he and his friend Coby Wentzel* hung at the sidelines, catcalling. "Boom! Boom!" they'd cry as I grooved with my friends. "That's the sound of Alice's feet landing!" He made elephant sounds in the hallway to trumpet my arrival anywhere.

At the time, I was maybe 20 pounds overweight, if that. Photos of the fifth grade me show a girl in transition towards becoming a teenager: malleable, pliable, soft mounds still forming into grown muscle. Thanks to kids like Duffy, I spent years hating my perfectly normal body. When he moved away, just before seventh grade, me and my nerdy friends held a dance party at our cafeteria table.

But now I was a college sophomore, who'd changed the spelling of my first name, the "Y" symbolizing rebirth as the person I was meant to become. I was working over the summer in the East Halls cafeteria, catering to the camps being held on campus. Duffy proudly told me he was a counselor at the Special Olympics camp, for special needs children.

I wanted to vomit. I wanted to report him to his superior, tell the camp director they'd hired a bully. At the very least, I wanted to confront him; let him know how much he'd hurt me.

But I sensed that would only take me backwards, into depths off pain I'd spent years shucking off. Besides, I reasoned, the fact that he was now a counselor for a camp like this, maybe it indicated that he'd changed.

So instead, I shrugged and said, "That was a long time ago, but you do look vaguely familiar." I nodded at the next person to hold out their tray, and Duffy awkwardly shuffled along, out of sight.

Me at about age 12 next to a tree in my backyard.
I'm wearing a soft striped sweater in pastel pink, purple, yellow and white stripes.
My belly is a little soft, but I otherwise look tall and healthy, someone growing into herself.
I'm hiding my face half in shadow, my large glasses covering half my face.
My wavy dark blonde hair falls to my shoulders.
It astonishes me how much my son looks like this now (but slimmer).
I tell him every day how handsome he is.
I hope he hears me.