More memories, mostly junior high

A few more childhood memories:

Auditioning for a role in the local Children's Nutcracker, except I couldn't stop giggling because the person I was reading lines against (an adult, not another child) was using a voice that struck me as goofy.  I didn't get a speaking part.  I did, however, get to be one of the snowflakes.  (I remember the first rehearsal where we were told to line up, so my best friend at the time and I stood together, except then they paired off down the line -- one, two, one, two, etc. -- to make two equal lines, so we got split up.

Doing the Children's Nutcracker the last year I was eligible; I was one of the Russian dancers.

Doing Oliver as the school musical in England; the audition piece for the role of Oliver (which they were allowing any kid to do, not just boys) was a soft sad song, so I sang softly and wistfully, except then they said no because they couldn't really hear me.  I wanted to protest that I could sing louder, that it was an Artistic Choice rather than a lack of singing volume, but I was too shy and anyway no one got do-overs.

I did continue drama in junior high -- I was a flower in Alice in Wonderland (except that I was the only one with no ballet experience or ability, so I kind of stood out; I also was in a performance of A Christmas Carol, and I insisted on being Tiny Tim because he was so ~inspirational~, and the drama teacher wasn't happy with that because it felt like typecasting (because that was after the FOP had kicked in and so it was sort of "have the disabled kid play the disabled kid") but let me do it.  I do sort of wish that I had asked for a larger part, though.  I got bored to the point of being able to memorize everyone else's lines.

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At some point I joined the local kid's swim team, I think because water exercise is the best sort for people with FOP.  (It's low impact, and you aren't doing a lot of standing.)  The tryout for it had me swim two laps, across the pool and back, and by the time I was done my limbs felt like rubber.  I knew how to swim, but previous to that I tended to spend pool time goofing off rather than doing laps, plus I was trying very hard to impress the people in charge so they'd let me in.  (I also remember that we forgot a towel, so when I went to shower afterwards I had to drip dry before I could get dressed.)

I remember swimming in the rain, which was an oddly magical experience.  If there was any chance of lightning, of course, we had to get out of the pool and stand shivering where we wouldn't fry from a lightning strike; but without that chance, I loved swimming in the rain.

I remember swim meets, where I was pretty much always the slowest.  I got ribbons anyway, because they gave ribbons to everyone, but getting an "8th place" ribbon when there were only eight swimmers in the heat is a little ... discouraging.

I remember one practice where I got stung by a bee: I was doing an exercise meant to help with backstroke skills, where you swam next to one of the lane lines and pulled yourself with that hand.  There must have been a bee sitting on the lane line, and I must have smacked my hand right on it, because I felt a sharp pain.  I remember thinking "Oh, so that's what a bee sting feels like", and scratching out the stinger the way I remember being told to, and then going over to the instructor and ... er, waiting politely while she finished the instructions she was giving to a different group, before getting her attention when she was free (I was a very polite and shy kid) and saying "Uh, I think I got stung by a bee."  She told me that it would have been perfectly appropriate to tell someone immediately, and she made me get out of the water while they watched for any allergic reactions.  Luckily there weren't any.

I also remember that, for some reason that I absolutely cannot remember and cannot even come up with a plausible possibility, joined the water polo team.  I don't remember ever enjoying it; I remember being miserable, and dreading it.  I remember that I was absolutely thrilled with myself the first match (not just practice, actual match) that I made all the way through without once going to the side to hang on for a few minutes out of exhaustion.

(I kind of miss that sort of ... I don't know if you would call it optimism, but -- the state of mind where you judge yourself based on your own progress rather than comparisons to others.  I was honestly thrilled and proud for managing it.  These days, I would be more likely to rip myself to metaphorical shreds because, yes, sure, it was the first time I managed that, but it was something everyone else on the team managed every time without problem; it was a baseline minimum, not something worth celebrating.)

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There was one time in 8th grade history that the teacher offered to buy a milkshake for anyone who could answer his question.  I don't remember which direction the question went, but it had something to do with "Seward's Folly" being the term for the purchase of Alaska (since it seemed like a bad idea at the time).

Now, I must preface this by saying that the year we were in England, when I would have been in 5th grade, my sister would have been in 8th grade.  And 8th grade is when you take U.S. History, which for some odd reason isn't covered much in British schools, any more than the dates of kings and queens of England had been covered in ours.  So to make up for the missed class, my sister had to study on her own, which meant my parents had to drill her a lot.  And often this happened on car trips, where I -- as captive to the process as she was -- absorbed some of the information by necessity.

And three years later, I still remembered some of it.  Not everything.  But somehow Seward's Folly had stuck in my brain, and so when he asked the question -- which was either "What did 'Seward's Folly' refer to" or "What was the contemporary term for the purchase of Alaska", though probably the former -- even though we hadn't covered it at all, my hand shot up immediately and I gave the answer.

His expression turned from a smug "I bet none of you will get this" to a rather annoyed put-out sulk.  He did pay me a couple dollars though; I was just happy to have known it, and didn't care about the money, but he had promised payment in front of the class.

Harry Potter had not been written yet, but I was so totally a Hermione.

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The junior high had a magazine selling program going while I was there -- the sort where the kids went door to door trying to sell magazine subscriptions, and got points for each subscription sold.  You could 'buy' things with the points, plus the top sellers got special prizes at the end of the drive period.

Some of the prizes were useful: for some ridiculously large number of points, you could buy a camera.  I don't remember if it was a good camera, but it was at least something worth getting.

Some of the prizes were just cute: my favorites were these little critters, I don't even know what to call them.  They were sort of grown-up versions of the pom-pom creatures I made as a kid (wind yarn into a pompom, tie and trim as appropriate, then glue on googly eyes and felt feet), the same sort of "little ball of fluffiness with extras glued on", and they were freaking adorable.  They also came with an elastic loop that could fit around your wrist, or be used to hang them from things, or whatever.  They also were a lot cheaper pointswise.

There was one time that I decided to get a bunch of the little fuzzy critters.  I didn't get duplicates, but there were so many that I liked, and I just decided to get one of all of those.  I wore them around my wrist like a big fuzzy bracelet, and was super proud of them, and loved them, and cherished them.

Until I got home.

I remember my mom getting super upset at me for "wasting" the points like that.  Because it would have been so much better and more sensible to save up for something good like the camera.  Because the critters were cheap, and the company in charge of the prizes was trying their hardest to trick people into getting the cheap stuff rather than the sensible stuff that would have cost more.

I know now that she was just frustrated on my behalf at the company, but all I remember is the sick horrible feeling that I had done the wrong thing (and I was always very big on following the rules -- my mom has an anecdote of one time when I was in early elementary school and we were told to bring a brown bag lunch, and I threw a fit over taking a lunchbox because it wasn't a brown bag and that was breaking the rules and that was just inherently wrong -- so doing the wrong thing was sort of the worst thing ever), and I wasn't able to even look at any of the critters again without bursting into miserable tears.  Even by the end of high school, the sight of one of these guys would open a pit in my stomach.

There are a few things for which I wish I had a time machine so that I could go back and give my younger self a hug and say, "It's okay to love what you love."  This is one of them.