28th
May 2012
Dear Cassi,
Do you remember a time when you were young
and gave nicknames to so many folks? I know I haven’t written about middle
school in a moment or two, but a thought came rolling to me when I saw a girl
in tight jeans.
In middle school I knew a rather chubby girl
who would wear these tight tapered jeans every day. She looked rather good in
strait legs but the tapers just made her look fat.
At first Potato Head had a thing for her.
He had heard a story about one of her male friends seeing her with her shirt
off and wrote her a note asking about it which I delivered.
As she was a girl with flesh to spare and
she was one of the first to grow a chest which she had to shame in showing.
That and gray denim stretched over those two cantaloupes must have made Potato
go nuts. This meant nothing to me as I have always, even then, been a hard one
to impress.
Now I think back and every third moment I
sat “what was I thinking” or “gross” but when you’re thirteen I guess wanting
to do whatever thirteen year old should do together is okay.
In any case, this chubby girl made a bee
line for me once I left the note and was convinced that I had written it
grilling me for more than an hour. I had promised not to disclose the writer
and so was rather determined to keep mu silence.
Potato on the other hand came off with it
himself and she was insulted and upset. Further she had stated that she had
been so young at the time that she had no chest to see. The boy who had seen
her ivory skin we all thought was gay anyway.
I got the impression that the chubby girl
had her eyes fixed on me brining us back to the conversation even after Potato
had set her strait. I can only imagine how ugly of a couple we would have made.
It would have been like two white elephants snuggling.
For the next two years Potato called her buffalo
chips. I guess he was a spurned lover. I wish folks could get past that
mentality, but I doubt anyone ever does.
Know when to be mature, little sister,
Richard Leland Neal
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