A few stories from when I was a child. It is for a translation project I'll explain later this week. :)
Puberty, 11yrs.
It’s strange, waking up one morning and putting on my glasses, and realizing that… I could not see. I thought something was wrong. I took them off. I could, strangely, see. I put them back on again and the world around me turned into a Technicolor blur. I had to take them off. Of course, my family did not believe me when I told them that I could no longer see out of my glasses. However, I insisted, and they took me back to the ophthalmologist. The melanin in my body had skyrocketed, and my eyesight doubled overnight. As it turns out, this is not unusual for those with ocular albinism. During puberty, eyesight can increase because the body may make more melanin while it grows.
Game Boy, 10yrs
In elementary school, like many of my classmates, I loved Pokémon. It started when my older brother bought himself a brand-new Game Boy Pocket, leaving me with his grey brick of a Game Boy from the 1980’s. Naturally, my parents were not happy. They wanted me to steer clear of video games. Still, they let me keep my brother’s old games and system, probably because they had originally been gifts from my grandfather.
I had gotten Pokémon when I was nine, and when I turned ten I had my ophthalmologist appointment, dragging the game system with me for the eternity I had to sit through in the waiting room of the hospital. Whenever he thought I was not looking, my father tried to take the system away from me. Finally, when it was my turn to be seen, my father, exasperated by my excitement with the little device, asked the doctor to agree that I should not be playing video games at all.
The doctor disagreed. After all, I did all of my schoolwork, I played with my friends, and I still got good grades, despite liking plumbing tunnels with Mario and catching Pikachu. Also, playing the Game Boy had helped calm down my shaking, uncontrolled eyes, my strabismus was not as easy to spot. Playing video games was actually giving my eyes something to focus on. While playing games may not work for everyone, it was certainly helping me.
Lunchbox, 9yrs
In elementary school, I was the most teased student in my grade. I was ignored, made fun of, and generally thought to be both stupid and weird. However, because I was so much bigger (I was about five feet tall at nine years old, and I was also very fat), and I had an older brother who was protective of me, the other students never attacked me physically. However, a new girl who had moved into our town got a group of girls together and formed a club to figure out ways to bully me.
One morning, she and three of the girls from her group banded together and attacked me in front of half the students waiting outside in the morning to be let in. It had rained the night before, so, before I knew what was happening, I was on the ground, in the mud, with one of the four sitting on my back, and another holding my arms behind my head so that I could not move. They had grabbed my backpack from me, too, and the third girl proceeded to remove all of my books and things out of my bag, stomping on them (and almost breaking my glasses). The leader ripped open my lunch, throwing each of the contents into the mud and squishing them with her foot, until my juice box exploded like an overripe piece of fruit in my face.
The teachers finally broke them up and pulled them off of me, but the girls received no punishment from the school at all, other than saying “I’m sorry” to me. The leader girl’s mother did not even care, although the other three girls were punished by their parents. The leader girl continued to bully me for two more years until she moved away. Even though I was angry at what happened, I was never mad at the girls, and I never thought to attack any of them back. I knew they were picking on me because I was an easy target, but showing that I was angry or sad would only make them want to hurt me more.
Kiss, 8yrs.
When third grade started, a new student moved in from Texas. He had long hair, a pierced ear, and acted differently from the rest of my classmates. Since people often do not like what is different from them, the other children either ignored or teased him. Since I was ignored and teased, too, I decided that I should introduce myself to him and try to be friends.
At lunch, a few of the boys started to pick on me, calling me names. The new kid quickly yelled at them, saying, “Don’t pick on her! I like her!”, kissed me on the cheek, and ran after them yelling, charging at them with a large plastic dinosaur, flailing it over his head like a sword. After that, none of the boys tried to pick on me, although some of the girls continued to.
Being yourself is the best thing you can be, because I’d rather be friends with someone who stands up for others who get picked on than someone who picks on others. After all, ten years later, this boy was my date for my high school senior formal dance. We both still remembered.
Sunburn, 7yrs.
I always have to put on tons of sunscreen, and cover up outside, including wearing a hat. Even the top of my head, under my hair, has burned without wearing a hat. Sunburns are horrible, and I can remember the worst one, when I was seven. I was visiting Florida with my family; we were outside under the hot sun at the beach. I had, actually, used plenty of sunscreen. Unfortunately, it wasn’t waterproof, and washed right off once hitting the surf. What came next was an end to my vacation- a trip to the hospital, gobs of disgusting and oozing aloe dripped down my lobster-red back, and a bathtub full of icewater. There’s still a mark on my back from the burn, and it’s a reminder to me that I need to constantly reapply more sunblock.
