When I Was Seven

When I was seven, a fly flew up my nose, and I couldn’t get it out. One nostril was suddenly clogged. I went to my mom, blew my nose, and this disgusting, hairy, winged bug came out of me. I am still traumatized by it—poor fly.

When I was seven, I stepped on a bee, and it stung the bottom of my foot. It hurt so bad, and it swelled up and became big, red, and tender. When I was seven, a girl I knew took a swallow of her rootbeer on the lake's beach after water skiing, and a bee stung her on the tongue. It reminded me of my foot.

When I was seven, there was a gigantic earthquake early in the morning, and I was on the top bunk of my bunkbed, and the earth swung back and forth, and my bed swung back and forth, and my dresser swung back and forth, but kept me from falling over and trapping in me my room. My little sister laughed and laughed as the invisible hand swung her cradle, and we all laughed and laughed with her until we were evacuated because the dam above us threatened to unleash all the water it was holding back above our neighborhood.

When I was seven, a helicopter flew over the park and dropped ten thousand ping-pong balls, which bounced all over the softball field. We ran to scoop them up, and they contained nothing but discount coupons for the local stores. But we didn’t care because the ping-pong balls bounced all over the place, and it was fun.

When I was seven, my best friend’s dad drank Coors with my dad. But my friend’s dad drank too much, and my best friend was mean to me. But it didn’t matter because we could stay until after the street lights came on, play hide-and-seek, and ignore all the parents with problems that weren’t ours.

When I was seventeen, a softball dropped on my head out in right field, and I was taken out of the game. It ended my ten-year career as a star athlete because I had never played in the outfield before, and the coach didn’t care, so I didn’t care anymore either.

When I was seventeen, my boyfriend said he didn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore but didn’t tell me why. And then, his mom died of cancer, but I was seventeen, and I still didn’t understand.

When I was seventeen, I found a new boyfriend, and we had sex. It was okay. It was more embarrassing than anything else, but we worked on it, and it got better…..sort of. When I was seventeen, I thought that because I had sex with someone then, I had to stay with them for the rest of my life.

When I was seventeen, I worked in a video arcade, and all the boys wanted my tokens. I only gave tokens to the boys that I liked. I had a fast car and could play all the video games I wanted because I had the keys to the store. I could drive there and open early or stay late, playing the games and counting the tokens.

When I was thirty-seven, I had a four-year-old little girl. We would sing Disney Princess songs in the car, and I would let her sit in the front seat. When I was thirty-seven, I had lots of friends, and we would take our little children to Sizzler to eat steak, salads, and ice cream and then hike for miles and miles in the Hollywood Hills.

When I was forty-seven, I discovered that people could be weak and evil and that other people allowed them to be that way. I also discovered that people could be wonderful, loving, special, unexpected people.

When I was forty-seven, I went back to school again because I loved school and learning. I loved the youthful enthusiasm, great teachers, hard work, and feeling of accomplishment.

When I was forty-seven, I finally figured out that you don’t have to stay forever with the first person you have sex with.

When I was fifty-seven, I learned to take care of myself, do what I wanted, and care for whom I chose despite society’s expectations and mothers and mothers-in-law and fifty-year-old men with their insecurities. So I took a road trip, and as I traveled across the country past the rivers and the plains and the mountains and the cities and the forests, in the rain and the snow and the wind, passing the windmills and the cows and hawks and crows and the Starbucks and the Targets and Barnes and Nobles and the malls with the video game arcades and the colleges with professors….and I saw the clouds and the sky and passageways beyond.

Someday, I will travel beyond, and there will be flies, bees, earthquakes, babies swinging in cradles, life-saving dressers, rootbeers, helicopters, ping-pong balls, tokens, singing little girls, and twenty-year-old boys. They will all sit beside my seven-year-old self as we discover what else lies behind and beyond.