One of the Mom's at Girl Scouts camp called me Big Britches Girl before I quit the Brownies.
It was because I taught her daughter what a tampon was,
I said, "You use it for your period, whatever that means" and we were convinced that
grammar and our genitalia would somehow merge into this isolated terror dome
as we grew older.

I didn't know what britches are when I am memorizing Fugees lyrics and singing
them to my Nana at the Rocky Point Diner, don't know how to hike 'em up to my waist
when some loud and pit-stained man
tells us that he doesn't wanna hear about me defecating on my microphone,
but maybe if I knew what defecating was I could have talked more shit,
maybe if I knew what my nickname was I could've done L-Boogie better,
but i just sunk down in my booth while Nana taught me young how to brush the dirt off my shoulder.

I learn that if you are always one step ahead there'll
be no one to leave you behind, that if you know all the things to say
and when to say them, the punch to the line, the hook and the sinker,
the rhythm and the rhyme, then you won't need a life raft,
that you don't need to sink, that words can change a bad thing better.

Big Britches Girl knows shame before laughter,
so laughter becomes the pitstop to the poison,
just let it smooth over the tongue like a sour lemon drop,
with every fleck of skin that poison pelts, the more you pierce the surface,
I will suck it up and sweat it out. I have the jokes.

When Maureen doesn't invite me to her birthday party in 4th grade
and all the girls are trading ring pops from their goodie bags the next day,
I turn my broken pencil into a cigarette, my tic-tac box into a Zippo, and I
sit on top of that jungle gym and fake-smoke that shit like a tiny baby dyke James Dean
and when she comes up to tell me that
she 'forgot my invitation' I tell her that I was busy anyway,
shrug off cool like no big deal, like I had plans, so run along.
That I didn't cry into my pillow, that I couldn't tell my Mom that I was sad
because...cancer, so I just let it roll off of me like thunder.

Big Britches Girl knows all the vocab words, so Mr. Salmon lets me write the
class newsletter every week, on a sticky old type-writer in the back of the room.
While everyone else copies down the chalkboard dust into their marble notebooks I am
caressing the home-row like a braille map to my future, learning how to
pre-possess a picture in my mind and make it pop, meander down the
misanthropic meters of iambic gore that has been eating me and it is magic.
My wise mind knows that children are terrible to each other.
I don't get hurting for the sake of hurting,
I think these people haven't felt enough real pain
to know that sticks and stones would be better.

But the possibilities on a page are pure ecstasy, I abuse my privilege so hard that I don't even
see it coming when Katie steals my journals of pasted notes and poems,
Rats me out and I am the hard knocks Harriet the Spy of home room. my sister is crazy, that my mom might be dying, that my dad is cheating,
and that I love Larry Pipitone the
only way a 9 year old can understand, in hearts around his name,
and we will go to Space Camp together some day..

I don't understand why people are mean, why they think those sort of things are funny,
That if they knew my mom they wouldn't be laughing,
that there has to be some relief to all of this
and why'd this teacher waste so much time telling me I was better than
when all I've ever wanted was to blend?
but Larry gives me a clementine from his lunchbox and a picture of the Tasmanian Devil and I know
that there are good people in this world, and know then that these people will grow up to suck some day.
That 4th grade will be their peak and that's pathetic.

Big Britches Girl will not peak at 9. She will have to wait
until those britches grow into her, will be an old-souled late bloomer, will survive
a thousand tiny tragedies of adolescent crimes and when those britches get snug and burst at the seams
she will pull on her big girl pants and eventually, in moments of clarity, things will make sense.
That sometimes you just have to laugh and blow some fake smoke rings up into the universe and pray
you'll get through grammar school.

Because Big Britches girl has facebook now, and she has seen what happens to all those
assholes from the suburbs. And besides, I still have the Fugees
and all they've got is Budlight lime and yearbooks to remember by,
and these days Big Britches girl doesn't even waste her time RSVPing to your
whack-ass Basic Bitch parties.

So go ahead, swirl a tiny umbrella into your Cosmo
and let that mascara run into your good old days, and when you're
feeling some sort of remorse for your shitty personality
you can copy down these words as your inspirational quotes
and paste it to your pinterest board that I forgave you.

That the view was always better from the jungle gym,
That it still is.

06/03/2014

Posted on 06/04/2014
Copyright © 2024 Lauren Singer