Remembrance of things past

The older I get the more precious my memories are. As a child I remember that I wished I was a boy and spent a lifetime wearing shorts, climbing trees and thinking that being a girl was such a nuisance. I learnt how to pee standing up and enjoyed sitting on a ledge and spitting at targets that came my way. If it came to a fight, I was the best at yanking out large clumps of hair …that was until my brothers discovered depositing chewing gum on my head was a great way to call it quits. My mother who never forgot I was a girl, used to braid my hair so tight that I could barely move my neck. Even bending over to read was a chore. While at school I found it difficult to concentrate because I was convinced that along with my hair, my two ears had also been yanked to meet at the back of my head. The super duper tight braiding also meant my cheeks were stretched too and I always had a blissful smile on my face. No one could guess my inner trauma. To reassure myself that my ears had not moved to a new geographic location, I would continuously feel the back of my head. My teachers misinterpreted these anxious movements and often thought that I was volunteering an answer to a question that had succeeded in confounding the entire class. Such was my plight. This was when I discovered that singing was a great way to distract my teachers and believe it or not, I made my debut as a singer, from the bathroom to the classroom at the tender age of nine.