Monday Memories: The Times...They're Changing

I'm nine. And I've learned a devastating truth...

Time goes by fast when you're happy. Which meant that after I blinked ten times, summer came to an end.

I had to go back to school. With short hair. And an incomplete understanding of this new craze about some movie called, Flashdance.

Thus started my fourth grade year.

I also discovered that girls no longer wanted to run around, so if I was going to have any fun, the boys would have to include me. Which they didn't really want to do.

My teacher didn't think much of me and often looked at me with an expression of equal parts displeasure and disapproval. She was young and fancy, and I wasn't the type of girl who had it all together. She liked the students who had it all together.

The cherry on top was that my crush, my Bo Duke, was in my homeroom. So I spent many days in giddy anticipation that he might talk to me, or tease me, or invite me to play kickball or baseball or dodgeball.

And...he did. He was always nice to me. So I didn't mind suffering through my teacher's dislike and the other girls' stupid fanciness with their hair and their clothes and their "valley girl" talk.

I just kept being Kara. Because I didn't know how to do the other stuff, and Bo seemed to like me just fine.