that works. No, I know— I’ll become a cheerleader. Everybody wants cheerleaders.
But Don said, “Carol, you really don’t understand. Charlie is never going to want you because you are deformed.”
I heard it. I believed it. I lived it.
His words struck me. I became a first-grade teacher because I thought that would be a good place for someone with a deformity.
My first year teaching, I had a little girl in my classroom named Felicia. She was the most gorgeous little girl I’d ever seen in my life. One afternoon, we were all working on learning to write our A’s. To a first-grader that means a big fat red pencil, lined green paper and a concentrated effort to move the pencil “all-the-way-around–and-pull-down.” The classroom was very quiet as everyone worked diligently.
I looked over at Felicia as I did so often, and I saw that she was writing with her fingers crossed. I tiptoed over to her, bent down and whispered, “Felicia, why are you writing with your fingers crossed?” This little girl looked up at me with her enormous, beautiful eyes, and she said, “Because, Mrs. Price, I want to be just like you.
” Felicia never saw a deformity, only a specialness she wanted for herself. Every one of us has something we consider to be not okay —to be a deformity. We can consider ourselves deformed or we can see ourselves as special. And that choice will determine how we live our lives.
Carol Price
Little Red Wagons
To be perfectly honest, the first month was blissful. When Jeanne, Julia, Michael—ages six, four and three— and I moved from Missouri to my hometown in northern Illinois the very day of my divorce, I was just happy to find a place where there was no fighting or abuse.
But after the first month, I started missing my old friends and neighbors. I missed our lovely, modern, ranch-style brick home in the suburbs of St. Louis, especially after we’d settled into the 98-year-old white wood-frame house we’d rented, which was all my “post-divorce” income could afford.
In St. Louis we’d had all the comforts: a washer, dryer, dishwasher, TV and car. Now we had none of these. After the first month in our new home, it seemed to me that we’d gone from middle-class comfort to poverty-level panic.
The bedrooms upstairs in our ancient house weren’t even heated, but somehow the children didn’t seem to notice. The linoleum floors, cold on their little feet, simply encouraged them to dress faster in the mornings and to hop into bed quicker in the evenings.
I complained about the cold as the December wind whistled under every window and door in that old frame house. But the children giggled about “the funny air places” and simply snuggled under the heavy quilts Aunt Bernadine brought over the day we moved in.
I was frantic without a TV. “What will we do in the evenings without our favorite shows?” I asked. I felt cheated that the children would miss out on all the Christmas specials. But my three little children were more optimistic and much more creative than I. They pulled out their games and begged me to play Candyl and and Old Maid with them.
We cuddled together on the tattered gray sofa the landlord provided and read picture book after picture book from the public library. At their insistence we played records, sang songs, popped popcorn, created magnificent Tinkertoy towers and played hide-and-go-seek in our rambling old house. The children taught me how to have fun without a TV.
One shivering December day just a week before Christmas, after walking the two miles home from my temporary part-time job at a catalog store, I remembered that the week’s laundry had to be done that evening. I was dead tired from lifting and sorting other people’s Christmas presents and somewhat bitter, knowing that I could barely afford any gifts for my own children.
As soon as I picked up the children from the babysitter’s, I piled four large laundry baskets full of dirty clothes into their
But Don said, “Carol, you really don’t understand. Charlie is never going to want you because you are deformed.”
I heard it. I believed it. I lived it.
His words struck me. I became a first-grade teacher because I thought that would be a good place for someone with a deformity.
My first year teaching, I had a little girl in my classroom named Felicia. She was the most gorgeous little girl I’d ever seen in my life. One afternoon, we were all working on learning to write our A’s. To a first-grader that means a big fat red pencil, lined green paper and a concentrated effort to move the pencil “all-the-way-around–and-pull-down.” The classroom was very quiet as everyone worked diligently.
I looked over at Felicia as I did so often, and I saw that she was writing with her fingers crossed. I tiptoed over to her, bent down and whispered, “Felicia, why are you writing with your fingers crossed?” This little girl looked up at me with her enormous, beautiful eyes, and she said, “Because, Mrs. Price, I want to be just like you.
” Felicia never saw a deformity, only a specialness she wanted for herself. Every one of us has something we consider to be not okay —to be a deformity. We can consider ourselves deformed or we can see ourselves as special. And that choice will determine how we live our lives.
Carol Price
Little Red Wagons
To be perfectly honest, the first month was blissful. When Jeanne, Julia, Michael—ages six, four and three— and I moved from Missouri to my hometown in northern Illinois the very day of my divorce, I was just happy to find a place where there was no fighting or abuse.
But after the first month, I started missing my old friends and neighbors. I missed our lovely, modern, ranch-style brick home in the suburbs of St. Louis, especially after we’d settled into the 98-year-old white wood-frame house we’d rented, which was all my “post-divorce” income could afford.
In St. Louis we’d had all the comforts: a washer, dryer, dishwasher, TV and car. Now we had none of these. After the first month in our new home, it seemed to me that we’d gone from middle-class comfort to poverty-level panic.
The bedrooms upstairs in our ancient house weren’t even heated, but somehow the children didn’t seem to notice. The linoleum floors, cold on their little feet, simply encouraged them to dress faster in the mornings and to hop into bed quicker in the evenings.
I complained about the cold as the December wind whistled under every window and door in that old frame house. But the children giggled about “the funny air places” and simply snuggled under the heavy quilts Aunt Bernadine brought over the day we moved in.
I was frantic without a TV. “What will we do in the evenings without our favorite shows?” I asked. I felt cheated that the children would miss out on all the Christmas specials. But my three little children were more optimistic and much more creative than I. They pulled out their games and begged me to play Candyl and and Old Maid with them.
We cuddled together on the tattered gray sofa the landlord provided and read picture book after picture book from the public library. At their insistence we played records, sang songs, popped popcorn, created magnificent Tinkertoy towers and played hide-and-go-seek in our rambling old house. The children taught me how to have fun without a TV.
One shivering December day just a week before Christmas, after walking the two miles home from my temporary part-time job at a catalog store, I remembered that the week’s laundry had to be done that evening. I was dead tired from lifting and sorting other people’s Christmas presents and somewhat bitter, knowing that I could barely afford any gifts for my own children.
As soon as I picked up the children from the babysitter’s, I piled four large laundry baskets full of dirty clothes into their
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