It was early in the school year at St. James Catholic School in Decatur, Illinois. (My little brother and I shuttled to Decatur to go to this school instead of the farm school closer to us because, my all day-working parents were enticed by the school’s all day-kindergarten program.) Getting to school early that morning, my brother and I climbed up onto one of the concrete platforms that flanked the big stairs leading to the grandiose entryway of school. Over my uniform of a navy blue jumper that had secret shorts under the skirt on account I seemed to have my feet over my head at least fifteen times a day and a light blue, button-down, neatly collared shirt; I wore a grey, acid wash denim jacket from which I’d painstakingly peeled the Rainbow Bright decorations I’d suddenly grown too old to endure. It was draped lazily off of my shoulders. I was an expert on how tough kids wore their jackets because I watched “21 Jump Street.” I knew the only accessories that would complete this outfit and tell the world I was a total bad-ass were lace fingerless gloves. I didn’t have any of those, so I’d taken a pair of my dad’s tube socks, cut five holes in the ends of each, and shoved my arms into them. They were pretty big socks, dad-sized and white with bands of yellow and blue at the tops. I’d wrongly anticipated that my thumbs would be right about where the heels were, resulting in a big wad of the sock positioned in the palm of my hand while my fingers poked through the small holes along the seam. Whatever. It was good enough, and none of it mattered, because the day before, I'd seen “Who’s That Girl?” starring Madonna.
The movie’s story revolved around a street-wise smart aleck, Nikki Finn (Madonna). Nikki wore skin-tight animal print dresses, high heels, and a leather bomber jacket. She sported bright red lipstick and a platinum blonde, bobbed hair-cut that was kind of curly. She laughed a lot, did what she wanted with a carefree attitude, and had a pet cougar that she walked around on a studded leash. Add the generic 80s plot of, ‘despite her great attitude and plucky charm, she gets mixed up with some bad dudes who are hunting her down for something they think she did, but she’s always one step ahead of them,’ mixed with the blossoming of an unlikely romance, and you had the movie equivalent of crack cocaine to an eight year old girl’s brain. I don’t remember specifics from the movie, but I do remember immediately after I watched it, I ran out to the tree in our back yard and climbed up to the top. Sitting up there, I felt charged and excited, and I decided that I would be a bad-ass just like Nikki Finn from that moment on. Then, I looked down and saw my brother come outside. I fished around in my pocket for a peanut and shoved it into the new vacancy left by a tooth I’d just lost and hurried down the tree to play a joke on him.
So, my brother and I were up on the concrete platform by the stairs before school, and I remembered that I was supposed to be a total bad-ass. So, I jumped up and down and made like I was boxing my brother. Right jab, left hook, shuffle step, shuffle step. Jake whined at me to STOP IT, which, in the tradition of older sisters, only encouraged me to do it with more voracity. Well, at that point, I right jabbed, left hooked, and then shuffle stepped right off the platform landing directly onto my chin on the stairs below. Dazed, I opened my eyes to a LOT of blood pouring from my face onto the stairs. I started to cry. An older kid, who was often nice to me and named Greg, led me to the teachers’ lounge where I was cleaned up by the nurse and got to lie on the couch and drink a can of coke while she called my mom to take me to the emergency room. I ended up with five stitches that I thought kind of smelled like Cheerios, and I got grounded for ruining a perfectly good pair of my dad's socks.
Two weeks later on the playground at recess, my best friend, Heather McKay, hit me in the face with a baseball bat.
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I was 3 years old and took a running leap off my parents bed. I landed on the freshly carpeted floor with my feet feeling the traction and the momentum of my leap carried me faster out the door of the room to the entry of a long old hallway in the boarding house I grew up in. The long stretch of hall was also newly carpeted and I was into going fast. As I rounded the corner I slipped a bit and didn't make the turn fast enough to avoid catching a corner with my fore head. I was taken to the ER and had to be strapped into what has come to be know as the papoose. 4 stitches. Of course, that was the first time.
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