A Crazy Soup

Mine's a Little Spicy, I Like it That Way

(Enjoy this essay as read by the human writer, instead of some AI generated BS.)

Margot Potter 2nd Grade Class Picture ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Hello, Friend,

My parents divorced when I was seven in 1970. I think that's right, but memory is a sticky thing so maybe I was six and it was 1969. I should know this but, I’m 61 and it’s been a while. Above is my second grade class picture, at least I think it’s second grade. Can you guess which kid is me?

If you've not guessed I'll go ahead and tell you. I'm the one with the goofy smile, the 'not very' Marcia Brady hair, and the large-ish forehead, third from the right in the front row. My hair is actually well-behaved in this picture, comparably speaking. My mother spent years struggling with that hair. It was unruly. It was wild. Much like the child under whom it flew freely, it defied convention with an absolute lack of shame.

I have snippets of memories from the first few years of my life. We'd already moved several times by the time we got to the lovely little farm house in Malvern, Pennsylvania. The little house before Malvern was at the end of a dead-end street. I believe it was in Narberth. Maybe it was a twin, but it's several lifetimes ago when I was very young and I simply can't be certain. Back then I rode a mean tricycle and had just begun my love affair with Barbie. I had flying dreams when we lived in that house, which I can still vividly recall. Yet I can’t recall how old I was when my parents divorced. Funny, that. Have you ever flown in your dreams? It's pure ecstasy.

It was in that little house that I began having a recurring nightmare which continued replaying on a fairly regular basis for many years after. It was morning. I awoke to the smell of bacon frying. I came bounding down the backstairs to the kitchen where my mother was cooking breakfast. Backstairs in old houses like this are called servant’s stairs, because the servants had to use them so as not to disturb their masters. Servants were supposed to make themselves invisible. How absurd is that? Servant’s stairs are often small, tight, and curved so they don’t take up much real estate, unlike the grand stairs in the entranceway. This is the origin of party in the front, business in the back.*

As I neared the bottom of these stairs, I was stopped cold by a most disturbing vision, between my mother and the staircase was a giant bee. Giant like in a Japanese horror film giant. My mother could not see this bee, but I could and I was terrified. She was smiling, waving, and insisting I come down to breakfast, but I stood frozen on the staircase crying and trying to get her to see this menacing bee.

I hated that dream.

What was the meaning of that bee? I don’t know. Perhaps even as a small child I sensed that something was wrong in our happy little family unit.

I remember planting a potato in the backyard of the Narberth house not long before we moved to the pastoral country setting of Malvern. I always wondered if that potato grew? Did the new people who moved into the house enjoy a plentiful harvest of potatoes? I have moved many times since and it's funny how often I’ve left some small token of my existence behind and wondered if the new people found it and what did they think?

But I digress in a tangential journey down memory lane, which is always filtered through the hazy fog of memory. My parents divorced when I was six or seven and that was a very good thing. Though, of course, at the time it felt awful. We moved every few years when I was growing up. It meant that I, the wild haired, translucent skinned, smarty pants, awkward girl was perpetually "the new kid." It's not surprising that I was usually met with sidelong glances and suspicious whispers. I’ve spent most of my life feeling like the odd girl out, never quite fitting in, and never feeling totally welcome. I am a misfit toy and I have finally come to embrace that.

Our experiences form us. They inform us. They color our perspectives. They shape our choices. I spent a lot of years feeling sad about being a misfit toy, but I'm not sad about that anymore. If other people are afraid of me that's their problem. I’ve embraced who I am and I've stopped apologizing.

I'd like to let you in on a little secret. We are all misfit toys. Some of us just delude ourselves into thinking differently. The more we embrace our uniqueness, the more we become ourselves. If we spent less time trying to fool everyone around us into thinking that we're not broken, I think we'd all be a lot happier. It's okay to admit that you're a little broken. It's okay if your surface has a few scratches or your stuffing has lost a bit of its fluff. The scars, the broken parts, the wrinkles, and flaws make us who we are. Mix that up with who we were when we foolishly jumped into this time-space continuum and you get a crazy soup.

Mine's a little spicy. I like it that way.

"Self awareness is not just a bunch of amino acids bumping together."

Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

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* It is not, but it sounded plausible, right?