Due to a failure with my go-to public transportation commute home, today I decided to walk to another station to get home more quickly. This requires a 10 minute detour, and althought not as convenient as sitting on a bus seat inside from the cold, I do not mind it too much.

Two minutes into my journey I get The Knife’s song “Hearbeats” in my head. Seeing as the sky was dark and there were not too many passerbys on the street, I began to softly sing the lyrics aloud as I trecked up the street, ultimately becoming oblvivious to my surroundings. My eyes aimed at the clear night sky, I continued undisturbed until out of the corner of my ear I hear a man exclaim to me in one flowing sentance the following:

“Wasup girl shit why don’t you smile for me you stuckup bitch.”

This gentleman, who given the first half of the sentance insinuated that he was making some sort of passing-by cat call, barely gave me a moment to dislodge my lofty brain from “Heartbeats”-land to respond to him with any sort of reaction before calling me out as a “stuckup bitch”.

I am certainly not a stuckup bitch, and upon realizing the rash and callous assumptions he had made, I turned around with a smile on my face and called out to him:

“What gives, dude!”

He didn’t turn around, so without reason, I was left to exist as stuckup bitch in the cold for the rest of the evening.

I arrive at preschool one morning and my best friend is having a pretend wedding with some girl I don’t know at all. My best friend was wearing a white turtleneck and a veil while the other girl was dressed like someone who was taking my best friend away from me. In anger and confused jealousy, I bite the other girl.

I’m taken aside by one of my preschool teachers, who sits me down and tells me that God doesn’t like it when I bite other people and that it’s wrong. I keep my head down and play with left-handed scissors while I listen to her lecture, already knowing that I did something wrong but knowing that it was the obvious thing for me to do at the time.

When my mom picks me up later that afternoon, she asks me about what happened. I tell her, she reminds me that it was wrong to do, and then asks me if I want to make Jello when I get home.

My favorite boy had just caught the train to the airport after visiting for a long weekend and I was walking up the sidewalk to my apartment. I washed my hair for the first time in a few days earlier that afternoon, but had left all post-hair-wash cosmetic responsibilities aside to make room for my post-favorite-boy wallowing. This left me approaching the outdoors with a plain face and a beanie barely containing the frizzy offsprings of wet, curly hair.

As I charged up the pavement with hopes of getting home quickly, an older one-legged woman wrapped in punk-tattered denim approached me from the opposite direction. Her face was scrunched in a toothless smile as she came closer on her cruthces until she called out to me:

ONE-LEGGED WOMAN: Heya toots! (She winks at me.)

ME: (Surprised, I react with a small smile and blush.) Hi.

ONE-LEGGED WOMAN: Looking good there. Spare any change?

ME: No, sorry.

I know better, but I’m flattered by her compliment and endeared that she called me “Toots.” This makes me feel better for the rest of the day.

I went to the park this weekend to sit around with some friends and enjoy the nice whether. While they engaged in a Scrabble game, I worked in my sketchbook on nothing particularly mentionable.

I felt some eyes peering over from behind me, so I glanced over my shoulder to find a tall man in a heavy sweater. Our eyes met, I gave him a reflexive smirk, but quickly returned to drawing. A few moments later I saw him again out of the corner of my eye. I assumed he was engaged in the Scrabble game.

All of a sudden he was half a foot away from me, crouching down next to me on the grass. I was startled. I didn’t expect him to be there, so close to me. He was older but very good looking, with piercing blue eyes and a charming face. But even still I felt kind of terrified.

He said hi and asked me how I was. I told him I was okay even though I was nervous. I knew what he was doing, but I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out. He asked me what I was drawing. I told him nothing. He said that I should sell my drawings, and I told him that I didn’t know about that. He said that he would buy one of my drawings, anyway.

He asked me if I’d like to get a drink or hang out sometime. I think I blushed, and turned my head away from him and said, “Maaaaaayyyybeeeee.” I really meant no, but to avoid any further confrontation I gave him my book for him to write his number in. He wrote it down, and said that he enjoyed the moment we had when we saw each other. I felt like there were a million tiny fish flailing around in my belly. He said goodbye, and walked away. I felt like I was going to puke.

I first started drinking when I was a junior in high school. My first drink was a bottle of Red Hook beer, which as I recall left me giddy and euphoric as a drunk junior in high school. I hugged the boy I had a crush on, and I decided that drinking before you turned 21 was okay.

The second or third party I went to was at a popular girl’s house. All of the cool people were there, but I didn’t know very many of them. There was a boy there who worked at a grocery store with my friend. I was tipsy and he started to talk to me with a coy grin on his face. He looked like a teenage boy band version of Eddie Munster, and I couldn’t understand why he was talking to me. He knew I was friends with his coworker, so he decided to push things to the next level:

BOY: “Well hey, we should hang out or something. What’s your number?”

ME: “Ohhh… uh… my number? Hah, ummm. I forgot it.”

BOY: “You… forgot your number?”

ME: “Yeah, I forgot it. Sorry!”

Then I ran away.