I Was an Odd Child

In case you have ever thought, “man, Valerie’s kind of weird,” I’d like you to know that this is not a new development. I’ve been kind of an odd one all my life- I think I’ve just gotten better at hiding it. In order to better illustrate my point, I’m going to regail you with some of the tales of my childhood.

Let us begin. The accepted wisdom in my family is that I lost my first tooth eating spaghetti. In truth, this is only kind part of the story, but until now I was the only one in my family to know the whole story. What actually happened was that my sister Crystal was supposed to be watching me. In retrospect, she wasn’t the best babystitter. She was the one who let my other sister, Danielle, fall off of the kitchen counter and faceplant into the linoleum (she was fine).

Anyway, while Crystal was watching TV or dancing in her room to Boys II Men or rearranging her monkey collection or something, I was in my room playing with my stuffed dalmations (I was obsessed with 101 Dalmations). I guess the one that I had decided was “Rolly” had sassed me and five year old me wasn’t gonna take that shit, so of course the most logical course of action was to bite his little plush head. Hard.

This was a mistake. Apparently, when it comes to biting stuffed animals, it definitely hurts you a lot more than it hurts them. I learned that the hard way, as I had drastically loosened one of my two front teeth. Naturally, I was very upset with this turn of events, so I ran downstairs crying.

Obviously, Crystal had no idea what was wrong with me because that would require her actually watching me. But I was also a pretty savvy five year old and knew that if I told her that I had bitten my dalmation, I would either get in trouble or made fun of, and didn’t want either of those things. So when Crystal asked what was wrong, I said I was really hungry and wanted some spaghetti. She totally bought it.

So I got my spaghetti and Crystal got to be a hero (a really, really gullible hero). To everyone’s suprise but mine, I lost my tooth eating spaghetti. This story spread far and wide to family and friends, just because losing a tooth in spaghetti is so absurd. And any time anyone would tell it, I’d just sit there feeling like I pulled off the scam of the century. Which I pretty much did. I mean, no one really knew why I really lost my tooth until today. Suckers.

-Valerie