Scrappy Little Nobody(12)
There was a lot of emphasis on how excited we should be to start our periods. This is a dirty trick, but now I understand why it’s necessary. It comes for us all, so there’s no point working little girls into a panic over it. However, there was perhaps too much emphasis on the magic of becoming a woman. So much so that I missed a few key points on the logistics of menstruation. For example, I thought that once you got your period you had it every day, all the time, for the rest of your life. This sounded pretty awful, but the girls on the tampon boxes looked excited about it, and I trusted anyone who could rock a side ponytail.
I was also promised an “awkward” stretch of time when all the girls would tower over the boys. For me, that moment would never come. In middle school, hiding the fact that I still shopped in the kids’ section became almost a full-time job.
In elementary school, being the smallest was cute. It had given me an identity, even made me feel special. But you know how thirteen-year-olds don’t want to hang out with eight-year-olds? They don’t want to hang out with you if you look eight years old, either.
My height made me an easy mark. When my sixth-grade crush enumerated the reasons he wouldn’t date any of the girls in our class, my label was “too short.” I laughed, then retired to the girls’ bathroom, where I got on my knees and prayed to Jesus to make me taller. No one in the world was suffering more than me.
Once girls started getting boobs, a whole new area of uncreative slams emerged. “Hey, Anna, you should date a pirate, because they love sunken chests.” Where do boys learn these insults? Is there a manual? Is that what they got in health class?!
When I came back from doing High Society, no one my age cared. (Despite High Society being the eighteenth-longest-running Broadway show ever!I) I had hoped my classmates might be impressed, but weirdly, a picture of me in the local paper singing in pigtails did not make me the hit of the school.
While no one at Lincoln Junior High especially cared about my New York sabbatical, dance and music classes gave me a level playing field of equally dorky contemporaries to befriend. I even went to overnight choir camp in the summer. (I’ll say that again in case you weren’t already in love with me . . . choir camp.) It was the only place where I was the cool girl. Well, not cool maybe, but I stood a chance. It’s no surprise then that in my professional career I have played a “cool girl” character precisely once, in Pitch Perfect, a movie about choir.
Man-eater.
In eighth grade my crush was the new kid, Darryl. He’d transferred from somewhere exotic that I remember being New York or Chicago but was probably Canada. On his first day, a girl in gym class got hit hard with a basketball and dropped to the ground, holding her head. We all stood there with our mouths open, but Darryl scooped her up like it was nothing and carried her to the nurse’s office. The kid ran heroically to her aid! Like an adult in a movie! Why couldn’t that head injury have been mine?!
One day a girl asked me—in front of Darryl—what size my pants were. Middle school was a time when kids asked each other all kinds of inappropriate questions, and if you didn’t answer, you were the weird one. She was trying to expose me as a genetic freak, still forced to shop at the Limited Too because of my undersized arms, legs, and everything else. Guess what, haters, I’d been shopping that very weekend! (Jesus, take the wheel!) I’d been to Wet Seal—which was trashy, but at least it wasn’t a store for children—and found a pair of jeans that I didn’t have to pin in the back.
I shrugged and said, “A small, I guess?”
“Don’t you mean a children’s size twelve?” She turned to Darryl. “She still shops at, like, Gap Kids.” (I didn’t. Gap Kids was too expensive.)
Oh, you stupid bitch.
“No, they’re from Wet Seal,” I said, pulling out the tag to prove their origin. “Yeah, it’s a zero, I guess.”
“It’s a double zero,” she pointed out, still trying to shame me. Today I assume she passes her time flaying old ladies for sport.
In a flash, I realized I could say, “So? Are girls not supposed to have small waists?”
“No, no,” Darryl said, “that’s proper.”
I had abruptly crossed over into the land where being small was a good thing! And Darryl had spoken four words to me! Suck it, you crone!!
It should be noted that a double zero was a good fit for a thirteen-year-old girl who was so painfully underdeveloped she didn’t get her period for another three years. If you aren’t a size double zero, congratulations, you don’t look ten anymore.
That was the best interaction I’d ever had with Darryl. I figured I’d take that little seedling and let it blossom; hit my stride once we got to high school, and I (fingers crossed) got boobs. I’d play the long game. Alas, he moved away again after eighth grade. And I did not get boobs in time for high school.
Yet looking young—a source of crippling insecurity—was a huge professional asset. My agent was thrilled I wasn’t growing. As long as you still look the part, casting directors value a few extra years of experience and maturity. Plus, child labor laws are more relaxed. Couldn’t the kids at school see this was good for my career?
A lot of the kids I’d met in New York were taking breaks to “just be a kid” for a while. Were they crazy?? I wanted to “just be a kid” as much as the next guy, but I wasn’t about to take a career in the arts for granted. There are only a handful of parts for children on Broadway at any given time, and maybe the paucity of roles should have been a sign that taking a break wouldn’t hurt. But I could see a future where I got drunk at office parties and babbled about how I’d been a child star (because my alternate-reality self would definitely overstate her former glory).