“Just say it, as loud as you can to
that big dog over there. Go on, say it! ‘I want a carrot! I want a carrot!’”
There I sat, stiffly and nervously
upon an orange plastic chair that had been placed on a table top in the front
of my first grade classroom. My sweaty little hands were tightly gripping both
sides of the chair bottom as if the next step were spontaneous hydraulic
ejection. Regardless of having no parachute in my possession, I had climbed up
onto it at the request, or rather, demand, of my teacher, Mr. Hoyt. He said I
was too shy.
Tiny bursts of hushed laughter popped
up like Whac-A-Mole about the classroom. The tiny hushed bursts might as well
have been nuclear explosions. Devastating.
My throat ached. It felt as if it
were closing, stuffed with a big ball of uncooked dough that was rising by the
second. The buzzing of the fluorescent lights was extra loud, as all of the students
stared at me in attempted silence, waiting to hear my since hidden monotone
voice for the first time.
Nana had made me wear a dress that
day—a navy blue dress, with white lacing along the bottom and tiny navy anchor
design across the waist. Those anchors were the only things mildly acceptable
about this horrid nautical themed torture arrangement. “Oh, you look darling,”
she’d say, with that strange, southern accent and seemingly smashed vocal cord
sound that only really tiny people seem to share.
At least ship anchors had a logical
purpose that I could comprehend, so I’d stare at them, giving my mind an
imagination workout and my eyes a perfect excuse to avoid uncomfortable contact
with others.
Excerpt from chapter five | Dear Mr.
Fantasy | Everything’s Hunky Dory: A Memoir
