In March of 1985 I was born, after hours of labor, they decided to C-section my mom and take me out. I was brought into this world looking like a conehead -- something my parents like to pull my leg about from time to time. I had very little hair, just wisps of white-blonde. I lived a fairly normal life until I was 3 (watching Captain Kangaroo, Jem, She-ra, and the like,) and then weird stuff began occuring. My brother was born (that's not the weird thing,) and I started wearing my halloween costume outside my house, not on Halloween. The kitty costume with the tutu and the leopard skin tail was my favorite. I wore it over tights when it was cold. I wasn't attending school, so it was okay to be strange. When I was 4 we moved to Arizona, and soon after, I attended kindergarten. At recess, if you picked up 5 handfuls of trash, the recess watcher-lady would give you a ticket that let you get a free ice cream cone, when the ice cream man came around on every other Thursday. She gave me a lot of strange looks though. I mostly always got ice cream except when I forgot to ask my mom for money, or I didn't bother picking up trash. Halloween that year, I was a zebra. I even had the headgear to go with it. I told the teacher that my mom had made it and the teacher was impressed. My mom really hadn't made it. And I was so scared of getting caught. A month through 1st grade, we moved to Missouri, where I am currently living. I started school in Missouri, and as a 1st grader, I was in my class's play. It was called "The Mitten." I was a mouse. I remember a kid who sat in front of me. His name is Andy M. I whistled to myself and he turned around and told me to shut up. I told him I was not talking. And the teacher told him to stop talking. In 2nd and 3rd grade, everything went smoothly. I had nice teachers, and good grades. In fact, 3rd grade was the only time that I have gotten straight A's. That was the 1st quarter. The rest of the times I had a B or two on there. I came so close so many times. 4th grade, Miss McLaughlin was my teacher. She was okay. She was a loud speaker and had a wide wide smile, kind of like a shark. But she was okay. Not always so nice, but never cruel. 5th grade though, ah 5th grade, was horrible. I had Miss Martin and she was my living nightmare. She terrorized me and made me cry in class. One time, I couldn't find a spelling assignment and she screamed at me and the entire class just sat back and watched as tears fell on my desk. I looked for it for a solid half hour after that. I didn't find it. But I did it at home and turned it in the next day. Another time, I put glue in my hand to let it dry and peel it off to see what it would look like, and she asked me what I had glue in my hand for with this menacing grin on her face. I said that I didn't know, because how are you supposed to explain something like that to a teacher? So I didn't bother. But she made me go wash it off. I guess all these things were my fault, but I wasn't a bad kid. She just treated me like one. 6th grade was alright. I can hardly remember any of it, except that I wanted to be in band but my schedule had been messed up somehow. So I was in library skills. That class was so boring. And there was this guy Tony who insisted on tapping his pencil against the desk all hour. Tap tap tap tap tap. Didn't charm me. So I switched into band and made a whole bunch of friends that I still conspire with. Also, in 6th grade I put a bunch of stickers on my locker door (frogs, leprechauns, et cetera) and I couldn't get em off. Unfortunately the school had a very strict rule that there would be nothing on your locker that there wasn't already there when you got it, at the end of the school year. So the last two days of 6th grade, every chance I got, I was scrubbing off these stickers. I even sprayed Windex. That just made the dye run and made the locker door pink. Hmm. But eventually I got it all off and no one cried. 7th grade was a "bleh" year. They say that 7th and 10th grade are the hardest. 7th grade was soooo easy for me. 8th was fun. I had Mr Berni that year. Civics 5th hour was always a blast because I was hyper from the food I had just eaten and then really sleepy ten minutes later due to our [something] cycles that made you sleepy about noon. His room was always so cold though and I sat by the window and by the air conditioner so I was an icicle but I had a really good time. Some embarrassing things that I won't mention but really really fun. 9th grade: very long. It seemed to go by fast now that it's summer, but I remember each day as being strenuous. My brother had a really tough time this year. Kids in the middle school are much meaner than at the high school. Really. My grades were good and I got a letter from Who's Who of American High School Students. I sent it back and I'm in the book now. A senior prank: pigs in the stairwells and elevator. 2 of them, 200 or 300 lbs each. There were actually 3, but they shot one, because they couldn't get it into the school and they couldn't just take it home. But they shot it. We were on the news. I wrote to some sports programs and websites to put the tilde over certain baseball players' names. They started doing it! Wow, one person can change the world.