This story is somewhat autobiographical (the stuff about the shoes and living in England is true) but otherwise, it’s fiction inspired by the smell of worms in April, which is SO tantalizingly close now.
At recess, there will be worms
By Mark A. Rayner
Each April would bring rain, worms and mortification. But this year was going to be different. I could feel it in the marrow of my ten-year-old bones, because this year, I didn’t have to wear the clunky black oxford shoes that had been the bane of my existence for most of my short life.
In kindergarten, there was still a glorious joi-de-vivre to everything. Need to take off your dress in the middle of class? Why not! Wanna eat the paste? Go for it! Mom makes you wear ugly black shoes? We don’t care, you’re beautiful baby! But sometime in early grade one, that laissez-faire attitude changed. All of us discovered, in our own ways, the horrible truth: “I’m different and that’s bad.” My difference was a minor one — my shoes were weird. But this kind of tiny deviation from the norm can have enormous consequences. I became a figure of fun and teasing for at least a few minutes of every day that I had to wear that hyper-functional footwear.
I’d had one brief respite from the embarrassment of those shoes, which was the year my family had lived in Britain. I was sent to a state school where the food was terrible, the teachers were mean, and most of my classmates were jerks, but did I care? No, because everybody was wearing clunky black oxfords, so I didn’t stand out. My “American” accent was distinctive, but that was one of those rare differences that made people like you.
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