10

I spend so much time with ten-year-olds. I find myself thinking a lot about what it was like to be ten. I remember moments of crushing uncertainty and awkwardness...Did the fact that the cute boy in the desk next to mine gave me all of his extra pencils when he cleaned out his desk mean that he liked me, or did I just come across as a person who would be grateful for someone else's discarded pencils? Someone, perhaps, who would remember those pencils for twenty years...And, oh, I bought the wrong shoes for picture day...
But, I also remember moments where I just felt good, and smart...funny, and grown up, and cool.

I must have been a little older when the new family moved in across the street. There were two boys in that family, both immediately fascinating to my seester my seester my seester and I (me). Our cousins were sleeping over the weekend that they moved in. We dressed up. I'd like to think it was just by coincidence. I don't remember any ulterior motives. Oh boy, what did I wear? Shiny, gray parachute pants and a pink sweatshirt with the neck cut out so it swooped over my shoulder...an armfull of jelly bracelets...and high-top sneakers. There may have been some long strands of pastel beads involved. And there was definitely a pony tail on the top of my head...well, slightly to one side, actually. Whoo boy. I thought I was such hot stuff. And my seester and my cousins were dressed in a similarly fashion-conscious way. We were all, collectively, hot stuff.

We were poking around the grounds of our elementary school...laughing and self-absorbed... and the boy was there, the new boy...sitting there, laughing at us from his perch on the forbidden fire-escape. We fought back...I, as the oldest, the closest to a teenager, even swore at him. I remember feeling like I was someone else, someone powerful, someone who could be one of the popular girls...and then a dad, playing in the tot-lot with his little girl, yelled at us...scolded us soundly for swearing where his little girl could hear us...

Suddenly I was me again. Horrified at my own scandalous behavior. I wanted so badly to go over and explain to the dad that we were nice kids...harmless little dorks, really...just playing at being bad-ass teens.

But I couldn't. I was trapped...by my own dorkiness of course, and by the crystal-clear image of us as I thought we must appear to this dad, to this little girl.

Mean girls with big hair who swore.