I was a Fourth Grade Nothing

Dear Nine Year Old Rosie,

Brace yourself.  

The next year and a half are going to be the hardest in your life so far.  I want to prepare you and tell you that everything is going to be okay.

Your parents don't get divorced this year and you don't lose anyone close to you.

But you will go through the wringer and you'll come out on the other side completely different than you are now.

Right now you are confident and happy.  You are carefree and you have lots of friends.  There is a teenage girl living right next door and she shares her stuff with you and sits outside with you while you let the sun warm your legs.  Down the street you have a friend who can play Fur Elise on the piano and she also has kittens and saves the shavings from her colored pencils.  You and your sister are always choreographing silly dances to the Ghostbusters Theme Song and the Beach Boys.  You have the guts to charge admission to your performances and the neighbors actually pay.  You take a year of piano lessons and you love it.

You are about to move to a new house and change schools.  You're used to this.  You make new friends easily and this new classroom is no different.  In the first week you have lots of friends and maybe even a crush or two.

Brace yourself.

All of a sudden, your new friends will not want to play with you anymore.  They give you an unimaginative nickname and use it all the time.  So you'll turn to the kid in class that nobody seems to want to be friends with, and even he will shun you.  The comments you hear from your classmates will ring in your ears for years and years.

"Don't drink that water, the dog just drank from that fountain."

DO NOT put any photographs on the poster you make for Spotlight of the Week.  They will be destroyed by your classmates.

I wish you wouldn't participate in the interview portion of The Spotlight of the Week.  You will, though, because you have hope.  You hope that if they get to know you, they'll like you.  They ask you questions like:

Are you allowed to sit on the furniture at home?

What kind of flea collar do you use?

When you go on a walk, do you have to stay on leash?

Your teacher will cut the interview short, and you will leave in tears.  Oh, sweet girl.  I wish you understood that this is not really about you.  They are trying to make each other laugh and it's at your expense.  Those kids are all caught up in a bizarre group dynamic where they are just glad it's not them being teased.  So they will go on teasing you.

They tell you that you're ugly and smelly.  They make fun of your puppy breath.  They spit on you and steal your things.  They run past you and shove you on the walk home from school.  You are utterly friendless and you feel totally alone.  They make you feel worthless and ashamed.  You believe them.  You wonder if maybe you deserve this.  

I wish I could give you a hug.  I wish we could walk home from school together.  I wish you could see who you grow up to be.

Even though they eventually settle down (midway through your sixth grade year), and even though you move away, the memories and the feelings will endure.  

You will feel worthless and ugly for a long, long time.  These feelings will, unfortunately, lead to some dangerous life choices.

One night, you will return to those school grounds with the man you married.  You will run your fingers over the metal signs where someone carved your nickname.  It will still be there.  

Standing there sixteen years later you are still awkward and gawky.  You have lots of freckles and pimples and bad hair.  And although you wish you could spare yourself the pain, you consider the characteristics that were forged in the fires of fourth and fifth grade.   

You know what it feels like to be the outcast.  Not everyone truly does.

You value your friends because you know what it's like not to have any.

Most of all, you think of walking through the door after school, battered and bruised physically and emotionally: ponytails hanging limp and briars caught in your hair, bits of puppy chow at the bottom of your Esprit Bag.  As you walk through that door, relief is what you felt.  You understand that Home is more than a shelter from storm and wind.  It's more than a place where you can scratch and burp.  Home is relief from chaos and cruelty.  Home is loving embrace, safety, and nourishment. Home is laughter and UNO games and complaining about what's for dinner.  Home is where we bask in relief.  It's where we fill our tanks each day so that the next day, we can face the big bad world.

You eventually become a Home Maker.  It's a big job, but if you don't do it for your kids, nobody else will.

Love always,

Woof Woof Liz

P.S.  Don't let your mom perm your hair.  And don't wear stirrup pants when you're in Junior High.  And for goodness' sake, as a freshman in high school, put down the green tights and the blue mascara.  And keep taking pictures.

P.P.S.  Your parents ARE going to get divorced.  Just . . . be ready.