Can I Sit With You?

by Mariann Vlacilek
Fifth Grade

Back in grade school, in Huntington Beach, California (in the 1940s), I felt so out of place, plain and unnoticed. I was very thin, and olive complected with long, straight, dark hair plus I felt like I was all arms and legs. I was born in Panama and my mother was Castilian and French, ergo the complexion that is now called "Mediterranean." I grew to envy all the girls at school with light skin and blue or green eyes. One girl in particular had red hair and green eyes, and I though she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

Sometimes, I was mistaken for another race and even called by a racial slur. At one point, this actually led to an altercation in the nurse's office. I am a very laid-back person but enough was enough! This was so very hurtful and damaging to me and I became even more self-conscious, and suffered a great loss of self-confidence.

It was a custom at my school that members of the graduating class would compile a list of underclassmen's traits that they admired and would like to have, and then publish it in the yearbook. Imagine my utter amazement and disbelief when my name appeared on their list not once but twice -- it had been unanimously voted that I had the most beautiful eyes and hands! Me ... the fifth grader with the long dark hair and olive skin. ME!

This was somewhat of a turning point for me. It made me realize that I wasn't an unnoticed nobody, and that there was something of me that was admirable. I should have learned from this, but the previous hurts were so deeply embedded that I bottled them up inside me, for years.

I didn't fully realize the lesson of being listed in the yearbook at the time. It didn't hit me until some thirty years later, when I looked in the mirror one day, and that little girl seemed to reflect back at me. At that moment I learned from her that, although thought of as pretty, I was also someone of value. That changed my life.

Every so often, I think back and am once again thankful and amazed that these "older" girls actually wanted something of mine that they didn't and couldn't have!