The Era of Annie

One night, Honey Bear and I were just hanging out in my bedroom, talking about this and that, including what life was like for us in kindergarten. I gave kindergarten a whirl twice. The first time, I was too young, so my parents pulled me out of it. I remember feeling vaguely spazzy and confused there. It’s interesting how much of a difference just one year makes at that point. I didn’t feel like the other kids were my peers at all; they seemed so much older, more mature.

The second time, I was in the morning kindergarten class. That worked out better. I didn’t really have any best friends, but I didn’t have any enemies either. Everyone just all kind of played. I told Honey Bear the story of how my mom sent me to school dressed as Punky Brewster (with giant painted-on freckles) for Halloween when it was not Halloween and I passed out cupcakes while the other, non-costumed students stared. My mom still laughs about that story today, because she is a sadist. (Honey Bear, too, found it hilarious.)

At school, we used to do things like write two sentences and Crayola-color a picture in the blank space above it. We each had our own set of index cards attached to a metal ring full of all the words we liked to use. Mine consisted of terms like “star,” “cookie,” “love,” “kiss,” and “Madonna.” I think some of those are still my favorite words.

Because falling in love with boys has always been my thing, this kid named Vinnie was the first boy I was ever smitten with in my elementary school career. He had a H’ween party for the whole class at his house one year. He was a skeleton, and I wore a pink princess dress my grandma made me with lots of itchy tulle. I accidentally left my dainty little gold bracelet behind, but his mom found it and somehow it came back to me.

Once, I stood in front of the class and read my two-sentence story about how I loved Vinnie and wanted to kiss him. (Was I the only one in the class doing embarrassing shit that year?) As Vinnie turned bright red, the rest of the kids all oohed. It was like a studio audience in response to some watered-down, saccharine sauciness transpiring between Uncle Jesse and Becky. (Vinnie actually still remembered my crush billions of years later and and brought it up in high school, not to embarrass me but just as a bemused “Hey, remember when you were in love with me?”)

I also remembered Annie, the neighbor’s daughter. She was about four or five years older than me, and I loved her! I wanted to be like her so much. She was like a cool older sister (that I totally forgot about until just now).

In turn, she treated me like an annoying little kid. I always believed everything she said (e.g., that Marilyn Monroe died of old age). My parents were skeptical of her and insisted that they caught her attempting to steal money out of my piggy bank, an act I could not fathom at the time, but it definitely was a shock to my world. Here was the girl I idolized, telling me things that are totally different than what my parents ever told me.

In one of our home movies, my family is playing in an empty cardboard refrigerator box in the yard, everyone rolling in it like wheels on a tank. Annie was part of this but I didn’t participate. I whined off camera about how I wanted someone to videotape me roller skating. In a moment documented for all of posterity, Annie told me to get over myself.

It killed me when she and I had opposite opinions. One time, she and a friend her age were hanging out on her front stoop while I lingered around. They raved about Paula Abdul. I brought up Madonna, whom I adored (see favorite vocab words above) and had had in-depth conversations with Annie about. I was grasping to feel connected to her and validated. But Annie totally scoffed. Madonna is so over!

An Indian family moved in at the end of the street. The daughter, Manali, was an unimpressed chick whom I never warmed up to. She and Annie became friends, and I became a pest. Once, Annie, Manali, and Manali’s brother walked ahead of me when we got off the school bus. I felt ignored and crushed. Annie turned around and told me to leave them alone, stop being immature, don’t be such a crybaby. I sobbed in the street until my dad showed up in his red truck and picked me up. Jesus, I’m kind of glad I had a “big sister” for like, a year at most.

A couple years later, Annie’s dad died in a car accident. Because he has a depraved sense of humor, Honey Bear said, “That’ll teach you, Annie, for ignoring Stef!” I certainly don’t hate her or anything more than two decades later for being, you know, a nine-year-old girl. And it’s not like I myself was never a dick as a kid. (See Exhibit A: The imaginatively titled We Brush Our Hair Club.)

Even after all this time, I bet if I was to see her now, I’d probably still be like, “Plz think I’m cool, Annie!!!11111” But being friends with her was all very scary for little me. She introduced me to a capricious side of the world where love was not conditional and sometimes people get sick of you—sometimes for days, sometimes for good, and sometimes for no reason at all. The unpredictability of all that is still something I haven’t gotten used to.

After I told Honey Bear about all this, I researched (not to be confused with “stalked”) Annie on sosh meds. (That’s social media for people who have no time to say social media.) She doesn’t have much of a profile; Gen Xers don’t seem to care much about Facebook. She’s a director at a college now. There’s a tightness in her face, like she can’t relax. I look at her photo and try to reconcile the woman I see with the nine-year-old I remember. It’s a struggle.

Then I started fretting to Honey Bear, wondering if I was the only thing real and everyone else was just, like, “noise” to interact with. He said he hadn’t planned on our memory-lane jaunt to send me into an existential crisis. I asked him if he was real, and his response was to pinch me. What mean noise he is. But it felt good to remember all that I’d forgotten I’d forgot in front of someone special.

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