In elementary school, I loved Lindsey Krebs in the way that second grade boys love hot rod model cars and Legos: compulsorily, as though zealous adoration were a classroom rule that if disobeyed, was punishable by the principal. Lindsey had the sort of curvaceous handwriting that made her seem more sophisticated than the average second grader. In fact, her lettering looked the way her name sounded: soft at first, zesty upon second glance. Lindsey did her capital “L’s” in cursive, big loops at the top and bottom. On rainy days, I would practice mimicking Lindsey’s handwriting on spare sheets of notebook paper or on the foggy bus windows during the ride home from school. It was on days like that – when droplets of water fell onto the pavement like stones – that I longed to jump into the loops of Lindey’s “L’s” and stay there until the sun came out again.
Lindsey was blonde, but not in the typical eight-year old blonde way: her mom did not make her wear her hair in French braids the way my mother did, and she never embellished her locks with a frilly ribbon. Lindsey’s golden hue had natural variation; the lighter strands of dandelion yellow looked the way all women who visit the hair salon monthly for a cut and color wish their hair would look naturally. The girl’s bangs swooped just below her eyebrows, and occasionally, she would brush them to the side with a few fingers. My bangs, trimmed on a regular basis by my mother, were cropped too short to get away with that sort of effortless little sweep.
Lindsey knew all the lyrics to the poodle skirt, petal-pushing songs in Grease before I even knew about the romance between Sandy and Danny. She got to be a flower-crowned May blossom girl in our school play about the months of the year, while I acted as the leprechaun representing March, jigging my way onstage. She was cool in the unconventional sense: she made the hand-me-down clothes from her older sisters look like nineties grunge or hippie chic, while I probably just resembled little orphan Annie in the outfits I inherited from my cousins. I was the typical “cat got your tongue?” little girl who was oftentimes too shy to do anything other than silently revere the cool kids, and because of that, Lindsey thought I was a snob. Once, her and my best friend Brittany Severe stayed in from recess to help the teacher assemble packets for class, and when I came in from swinging along the monkey bars outside, Lindsey came up to me and spoke for the two of them, and made a humiliating proclamation: “Me and Brittany decided we don’t want to be your friend because you’re mean and obnoxious.” I couldn’t believe it: Lindsey hardly knew me, and Brittany had been my best friend since kindergarten. True, I was reserved, but there was a part of me that loved making fun of people. Only to me, pointing out someone’s high waters or making a comment to boys about the obvious crushes girls had on them was gentle prodding, not invective. I guess no one else saw it that way, and as a second grader, simultaneously being pummeled by Lindsey Krebs, the free spirited goddess, and my long time playmate was worse than not understanding how to multiply numbers. I was confused, but determined to prove them wrong, and form some sort of triple alliance of girl power with them, even if they hated me.
Growing up, my mother was the type to make me help out around the house: there was always some piece of antique furniture that needed to be dusted, or some dishes that needed to be put away, or a table that needed to be set for dinner. Usually, doing them matched up with the sometimes timid and newly companionless aspect of my personality, and I would invent scenarios to make the tasks seem romantic: I could be an underappreciated servant girl like Sarah in A Little Princess who was secretly the richest girl in all her boarding school, or pretty Cinderalla doomed to wait on the big-feet of her stepsisters. It was during one of these ritualistic chores that I decided I was ready to confront my mom about something that had been lingering in my thoughts for weeks:
“Mom, I want a pair of red corduroy bellbottoms,” I said to my mother, not looking up from the potato I was peeling.
“Do you?” my mother said, raising her eyebrows, glancing up from her cutting board. “Why red?”
“Lindsey Krebs has a pair of red corduroy bellbottoms and I have to have some just like them,” I told my mother. To me, Lindsey was never just Lindsey; she was Lindsey Krebs or no one – you needed to hear the whole name to get the full effect.
“Well, okay, honey. How about you put that on your Christmas list?”
“Christmas is in December!” I said, putting down the potato peeler and facing my mother. If Lindsey disliked me, maybe looking like her would be the first step to being like her, and then she would have to undeniably embrace me.
“Yes, I know, dear – it’s in December every year,” my mother responded, emptying the carrots she had chopped into the frying pan.
I wanted to respond, but didn’t: I let the rhythmic peeling of the potatoes and the sound of my mother’s spatula raking against the frying pan speak for me.
“All right, then,” my mother sighed, wiping her hands on the thigh of her jeans. “I’m through with you. Thanks for gettin’ them ‘taters ready,” she added, trying to make me laugh.
I smiled in the same way I did when my father belted out opera songs about Willy, our redheaded golden retriever, in the car – the sort of smile I reserved for when I wasn’t sure whether or not I supposed to be chuckling. I didn’t know if Lindsey’s parents made up their own rhyming jingles, or if they could only buy her new clothes on holidays, but I could guess the answer.
Once a week, our second grade teacher at Relay made us write in our marble composition books. We were to respond to questions like, “What are you going to do this weekend?” and “Do you like winter?” and “What do you like to do best after school?” I didn’t mind answering any of these, but I always preferred it when we were assigned free writes; I liked inventing mystery stories that Scooby and Shaggy would have trouble cracking.
Usually, when I read the week’s journal question on the blackboard, I would tap the eraser on my pencil against the desk or dig at the initials written on the pencil’s ridges in black magic marker; this was my way of thinking. But there were occasional questions that required no premeditation at all: I knew the answer right away. “If you could wish for anything in the world, what would it be?” was one such question, one of those ones I knew as intimately as the archs and twists in Lindsey’s handwriting. I began scrawling with the dull point of my pencil; when I could beckon my words so easily, I couldn’t be bothered with trying to conceal my unsteady penmanship. I finished before the teacher asked us to stop, and passed the time tracing the eyelet flowers on my white pinafore, looking up every so often to see where Corey Beals was wiping his boogies and to notice the way Lindsey Krebs poked her tongue out the corner of her mouth when she was concentrating too hard.
When the teacher finally called the attention of the class, she asked someone to share what they had written. I raised my hand, arm darting up swiftly like an arrow aiming for the classroom ceiling, but the teacher called on Zach Falwright instead, who’s wish would be to have a room all to himself filled with Dr. Suess books so that he could read all day without listening to his little brother whine, and make up rhyming stories of his own. Elise Robbins was next, who said she wished that her father would stop packing peanut butter and jelly and sugar-free snack pack pudding everyday in her lunch. After each of them shared their stories, my arm instinctively bolted upwards, but the teacher was looking to call on those students who didn’t have their hands raised. Lindsey was her next victim: “Lindsey,” the teacher said. “Won’t you share your journal entry with the class?” The girl opened up her composition book, which was neon orange, not magenta, like mine – a tell tale sign of my overt girliness and aversion to all things sporty or action figure oriented or just plain boyish. Lindsey could play dodge ball with the lads or belt the lyrics to songs in movie musicals on the bleachers with us lassies; she was versatile and fit in with just about anyone.
“I can’t find my page,” said Lindsey, thumbing through the book. “Hang on.”
“Shall I come back to you, dear?”
“No,” Lindsey responded. “No – here it is; I found it.” She smoothed the page over with her hand, pushed some of those blonde locks behind her ear, and began. And there it was – Lindsey’s wish, out on the table, like an hors d’oeuvre for the whole class to sample: she wanted her family to be happy. I looked at Ms. Campbell, our teacher, who wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Eventually, she just said, “Lindsey, that’s wonderful.” I couldn’t believe it. It was worse than the time after school, when I was waiting for the bus to arrive, and my teacher asked, “You know who’s handwriting I love?” And when I asked who, expecting to hear my own name, I heard Lindsey Krebs’ instead.
“Does anyone else want to share?” the teacher asked the students. “Elizabeth – didn’t you have your hand up?”
“I changed my mind,” I said.
“You sure? Well then,” she began, before I could respond, “Are we ready to move onto Spelling? Corey, would you mind passing some lined-paper out to the class?”
As the boy rose, obeying his teacher’s request, I took the eraser of my pencil and began, word-by-word, eliminating what I had written in my journal. I wanted Lindsey Krebs to see, to know what my wish was, but I knew now that I could never let her know, and too, I knew that Lindsey Krebs and I would never be friends.
