Sometimes, I think about who I was in elementary school, and I don’t really think I was anyone. Not in the “I’m just a sad nobody” kind of way, even though I also was a sad nobody for most of elementary school. I don’t think I was really alive for most of my childhood. 

Who was I as a kid? This question may seem stupid because I’m only sixteen years old as of writing this, but I think about it sometimes. Who was I six years ago? I’ve always been artistic, I hated gym class, I loved animals, I wanted to be an author or a teacher, my favorite colour was blue because I wanted to be different. I was very anxious and had very poor social skills. This has been apparent since I was three years old in day care. 

If I had to answer this question right now, I would say, “As a child, I was a dog. Not literally, but I definitely did not have the mindset of a kid. I was like a really anxious and excited and shy dog. In some ways I still am.”

In pre-school I would stand behind the toy bins and watch the other kids play. I knew their names, their favorite colours, their favorite music, their favorite toys, etc. I refused to start the conversation. I would not speak unless spoken to. I would not play unless invited by someone else. I imagine I looked really creepy with my wide baby blue eyes peering through the crack between the two purple toy bins silently watching a group of girls play with farm animals. They definitely would have pointed and called me a stalker back then if any of them were old enough to know what a stalker was. 

I find my behaviour odd, a bit more odd than you might think because of this story; in pre-school, before anyone was allowed to go play you had to finish a puzzle. They weren't hard puzzles. They were dinosaurs, tractors, kittens, butterflies, and they were only about twenty pieces. I decided I would “fool the system” and I would always pick the five piece wooden dinosaur puzzle and finish it within five seconds. I find this story odd because what the hell was I rushing for? I refused to do normal puzzles because they took too long, but what was I so desperate to do? Stare at kids I guess. 

When I would stare at kids playing I would pretend I was playing with them. I would pick to be the horse on the farm. I would live in the forest outside the farm. I would be a wild horse. I also pretended that I was part of the conversation I was sticking my nose into. 

“Piggy, why did you eat all the apples?” one of the girls would ask her friend. 

“I was hungry!” The friend holding the pig yelled. 

“What about the rest of us?” Another girl asked, she was a turtle. A farm turtle. In Canada. 

“I can show you where all the best apples grow in the forest,” I thought about my horse taking them into the forest where he lived to find the juiciest red apples.

In kindergarten, I was still shy, but I made some friends. Peyton, Abby, Maddison, and Hannah O. We all called Hannah O, Hannah O, because she happened to have a rival, Hannah B. Hannah O has always wanted to be accepted by Hannah B and her gang, but this has never happened in all the years I’ve known the two of them. 

One day, Hannah O and the rest of the girls had the great idea to create a dance at recess and practice for the next few days so that we could show it to the whole class. I don’t remember the song, but it was probably something by Taylor Swift. Hannah O was in dance classes in our small little Saskatchewan town. She taught us all these new dance moves and at recess we all looked like seaweed being tossed around in the strong current of a really polluted river. 

Three days passed and we told our teacher, Mrs Hunter, that we were ready to dance. She said that we could do it tomorrow morning. The next day Mrs. Hunter gathered everyone onto the carpet and told everyone to watch and be quiet. She turned on the song and we started dancing. Almost right after we started, she decided she had something more interesting to do so she left the classroom. I don’t think we even got halfway through the song before everyone started pointing and laughing at us. The other girls just laughed with them, but I almost cried. Actually I probably did cry. I think that was the day my brain decided that if I have to speak in front of the class I should defend myself by crying, stuttering, and not even getting all the way through whatever I was presenting to the class. My fear of public speaking lasted from then until I was in grade ten. 

One of my core memories from kindergarten is when Jakub killed a chick in class and the teacher had to wash blood off of his shoe. This is the story; one day Mrs. Hunter told us all that since she lived on a farm with chickens, she would bring her incubator lamp and the eggs in a large crate and we could watch them hatch. The whole class was ecstatic. A week later we walked into the class to see a large wooden crate filled with hay and a large lamp shining red light over almost twenty eggs. Every day we would look at the inside of the eggs through a light. We watched videos about how eggs become chicks and how the yolk works and the eggs whites. 

However long it takes chicks to hatch later, we were doing art while listening to the cheep cheep of little chicks. After we were done with our art, we were all supposed to leave our projects on our tables and go sit in a circle on the rug. I finished and so did everyone else, so our teacher took out the chicks one by one and they started wobbling around the carpet. My favorite, because I was edgy, was the black chick. I scooped him up and gave him kisses and patted his little head. Then he pissed on my hand and I put him down. He wobbled his way over to Payton, who was not paying attention to the little guy running right past her and out of the circle. The poor chick took one step outside the circle and then…CRACK. Jakub, holding his art project in both hands, stepped right on the chick, killing him instantly. Then Mrs. Hunter had to clean blood off of Jakub’s shoe and pick up the dead bird while children cried and mourned for the baby bird. 

I should have known it would only get worse from there.