Growing Up

When I was a child, I thought I was something special, not in the way most children think they're special because their parents dote over them.  Instead, my "specialness" was more alienating than self-esteem building.  I felt like a foreigner, an alien in my own hometown, growing up for the most part in Appalachia, surrounded by a close-knit family and the rolling hills of a small southern Ohio valley town.

Like many kids, I wanted to be famous.  At first it was a famous singer, then a famous actress, which was followed by a series of disappointments as I discovered many ordinary, non-famous people around me that could sing much better than I and were much more beautiful than me.

I remember the crushing disappointment in fourth grade when I tried out for the part of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  It was undoubtedly a turning point in my life.  The fact that I didn't get the part was one thing.  Surely I would have gotten the part if I had been in the fifth grade because everyone knows that fifth graders by nature get priority over fourth graders, but the crushing blow came when I overheard my dad tell someone that she (not me of course) could really sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which of course implied in my mind that she could  sing better than I.

So I turned to other means of fame and "specialness."  For the rest of my fourth grade year, I was to be an astronaut after watching the movie Space Camp.  This troubled my mother, I remember, not to mention the fact that I was terrible in some key things like math, science, and especially anything athletic( I could barely jump rope successfully).

I was inspired then horrified later that year as I watched Christa McAuliffe board the Challenger space shuttle live from my classroom, never to return home.  And I remember Joey, the boy sitting next to me on the floor of my classroom wailing in tears as we watched her funeral (also live).   Joey, who was normally obnoxiously insensitive, was unconsolable and had to be carried out of the room to keep the rest of us from hysterics.