I moved around a lot the first few years of my life. My parents split when I was....about four, I think? Maybe five? My mom and I left Ithaca and eventually settled in with my grandpa George and my grandma Dottie (whom I called Garm Garm) somewhere in Broward County, Florida. I can't remember what city, it doesn't really matter. We didn't live with them long, and my mom moved into an apartment with her friend Beth. Here are two stories about fucking absurdly stupid things I did while we lived at that apartment.
Vignette one:
Of course my mom had to put me in school, and while we lived in that apartment, I went to Sunrise Elementary. CORRECTION: Horizon Elementary. I know this because I tried to look up Sunrise to see if there were any pictures of it, only to find out that Sunrise Elementary didn't exist, I was mixing shit up. The school was Horizon Elementary in SUNRISE, Florida. I was pretty fucking close. Anyway, it was a shit place.
Not pictured: Federal Funding worth a damn.
I only went there for one year. I'm not really sure why, my memory doesn't serve me well 100% of the time (see: my ego). My teacher there was named Ms. Stats, and again, I don't know why I remember that, but not why I didn't stay at that school very long. Here's what I do remember: we did a lot of arts and crafts in her first grade class. I vaguely remember something about carving stamps out of potatoes (letting children carve anything out of anything seems ill-advised. For fuck's sake, my husband doesn't trust me with knives NOW), but what I remember most was making Victorian-era Silhouette cameos. We would sit in front of a lamp and the teacher would trace our outlines onto a piece of paper, and then we colored them in. which I believe IS the traditional method: trace a lamp shadow onto paper, then have first graders color it in really badly with stubby crayons. Classically Victorian.
Anyway.
This is where I become the poster child for both responsible teachering, and effective child proofing. While Ms. Stats was doing her thing, I was doing mine. I was off wandering through the classroom, rummaging through places I didn't belong. There was a little washroom section in the very back of the classroom, in this hidden little alcove in the wall. There was no cupboard above the sink, and no cupboard under the sink, just bottles of soap, and boxes of cleaning agents. I sat down in front of the wash basin (one of those industrial plastic dealybobs with the big trapezoid for a sink with a barebones hook faucet, and a single tube that held it upright), and I grabbed a box of Ivory Snow. This very box:
I saw this box, and for some reason, my first grader brain thought, "that looks and sounds DELICIOUS", so I uh...I started eating it. I grabbed a fucking fistful and shoved it right into my stupid, stupid mouth. That's not even where all of this falls down, because I ate more than one fistful. I ate TWO. It took me two fistfuls of Ivory fucking Snow to figure out that this box of delicious powder was actually a box of disgusting powder. My stupid ass sat underneath a sink, like some sort of fairytale goblin, eating laundry detergent by the fistful, and here's the thing: MY TEACHER NEVER FOUND ME. Nobody ever realized I was exercising curiosity about Pica. I put the box down, and then went and told Ms. Stats that I ate something gross under the sink. She asked me what I ate, and I showed her, and she flipped her fucking SHIT. Pretty righteously, obviously. I remember her asking me why I did it, and I remember suddenly feeling VERY aware of how stupid what I did was, and reflecting on the taste in my mouth and thinking I didn't want to be embarrassed in front of my class, who was now an audience to Ms. Stats yelling at me about my eating fucking detergent. I panicked, and realized as she was asking me why the fuck I ate detergent that I had to come up with a damn good reason why I ate detergent. I whizzed through my brain for ANYTHING food-related that I could cover my ass with, and I blurted out, "I THOUGHT IT WAS MASHED POTATOES". Because my mom made mashed potatoes with potato flakes, see? Ivory Snow looked like mashed potato flakes. Brilliant save, I thought. Except it wasn't. This was not enough for Ms. Stats, just like it wouldn't be enough for me if my son was a dumb dumb and shoved fist after fist of laundry detergent down his god damn gullet. She asked me what made me think it was mashed potatoes. What about it being under the sink, next to bottles of soap, made me think it was mashed potatoes. I was fucking trapped now, because hand to heart, I have no fucking idea why I ate that soap. I just did. I just wanted to eat the soap. So I told the best lie I could: I thought the mom and the baby were so happy on a mountain of potatoes. I wanted to eat a mountain of potatoes. Which isn't REALLY a lie, I fucking love mashed potatoes. But there was no connection to them until I needed it. I think I knew it was soap, I just....nothing was going to stop me from greedily gnoshing on soap flakes. I got it in my head that a snack of detergent was my prize after nosily making my way through the classroom while I waited my turn for my silhouette to be drawn. This wasn't my initial plan. I didn't set out to find some soap to eat, it was more me rolling with my whims. Box under a sink? Wanna sit down and eat it? YUP. So I did.
Ms. Stats must have called my mom (or poison control. Or both?), and I must have been sent home, or Ms. Stats made a judgment call and decided I wasn't going to die, and since I didn't vomit, I was fine to stick around (you guys, the fucking WAY early nineties was a wild time regarding child safety), because I DID get to do my Victorian silhouette project, and I only remember that I got to do it because I was the only kid in class with curly hair, and Ms. Stats didn't feel like tracing the outlines of my curls, so I just had a huge, smooth bubble around a smaller, vaguely head shaped bubble with a jutted triangle for a nose. I think she was mad at me.
And that is the story of how I started the Tidepod challenge in earnest.
Vignette two:
There was a HUGE forest of Sawtooth plants and ferns and palm trees behind this complex that my mom and Beth and I lived in. There was enough space between all of the plants for a child to run through all of it, but I mean....that should have been ill-advised, because those Sawtooth bushes are fucking sharp, and I got cut to pieces on them more than once. Like I said: 1990 was a dangerous time to be a kid, but a great time to be a fairly absentee parent. So I was wandering around the savage brush of a forest that this Florida community provided when I had a brilliant idea:
I was going to go tell my mom there was a fire.
There wasn't, obviously, but this somehow seemed like a good idea. I didn't want to be an alarmist, though. I think my motivation was to show my mom I wasn't afraid of fire, and I was brave. So I went home, and sat down in the living room, staring at my mom who was smoking a Virginia Slim on the couch, because 90s. She played directly into my hands, asking me why I wasn't playing outside anymore. I shrugged with a nonchalantness far beyond my years and said, "I don't know. There was a fire, and I got bored, so I came inside."
My mom didn't automatically believe me, so I can only guess this must have been after the detergent eating and my judgment was questionable. So she pressed me about the fire a little bit, asking me where it was, and did I see it for real? I didn't smell like smoke (a bold assertion for a woman puffing away on the fucking stupidest brand of cigarette there ever was). And I started getting indignant. Of fucking COURSE there was a fire, mommy, it was in the bushes. And it was little, but it was still a fire. I got pushy enough about my imaginary fire that she got up, slightly more panicked, and called the fire department.
Are you ready for the story to get good?
There really was a fucking fire. A fucking tiny little brush fire had started, not by where I was playing, but close enough that I was commended by the fucking fire department for being so fucking brave, and doing the right thing by reporting a fire immediately instead of watching it. My grandfather bought me a fucking bike for my efforts. I got a stuffed teddy bear from the fire house. MY MOM GOT A DISCOUNT ON HER RENT. The entire fucking community was so grateful, because that fire could have been so much worse, and honestly, I remember the smoke looking scarily large to my little brain when we went outside to meet the firemen and tell them where the fire was. A big, billowing cloud, and the air smelled really bad.
That is the story about the time I willed a fire into being because I wanted to be a hero.
I honestly do not know how that happened. Hand to heart again, there was no fire when I went home. It was just an idea I had, to tell my mom there was a fire. I don't know why I had that idea, I don't know why I thought it would make me look brave. It is such an eerie coincidence, and of COURSE I couldn't tell my mom I fucking faked the entire thing. In my head, if I told my mom, or told the firemen that that fire wasn't my fire, and I knew that fire wasn't my fire because my fire wasn't real, they'd think I started the other fire to cover my ass. I didn't, I just lied at a really convenient time.
So...you're welcome, Sunrise, Florida. I'll accept that key to the city any time.
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