Mixed Media
My first act of rebellion (according to my parents) was my insistence that my clothes and shoes had to match. I was 4 years old and they were perplexed by my meltdown caused by not being dressed in the fashion I liked. From the closet they pulled out dresses, shoes, socks, sweaters, skirts as I yelled an angry tearful “NO!” or calmer happier “ok” –when the right item was found. They smiled and he said, “Who taught her about matching?”–she answered, “I don’t know.”
I think my first act of rebellion, was in 2nd grade. Over the summer I befriended a wispy, pale Spanish-American girl named Louise. She was the youngest child of oldish parents and the first USA born in her family. Laughing seemed to make her whole body ache. On the first day of school the kids teased her for carrying a boys’ themed cowboy lunch box. Her short cropped curly red hair, frailness and paper skin made her stand out enough as it was. Quietly she retreated inward, obviously affected by the meanness. The injustice of her becoming a social outcast, because of her parents’ cluelessness, upset me.
After school, my family went shopping, as was our custom. There, I saw the exact same lunch box. Since I needed a new one, I chose the “Gun Smoke” cowboys on horses in brown-orange and blue tones too. At the check-out line there was no judgement on my choice. The next day when Louise and I walked to school and ate lunch together (with our identical, twin, cowboy lunch boxes) the other kids looked at us quizzically saying nothing. We happily ate our sandwiches in the patio and drank our juice from the thermoses with the guns-drawn theme. Being a rebel felt pretty good.