Ugly Little Girl

There was once an eight year old girl who wasn’t pretty. She wore thick glasses so heavy they rubbed sores on her nose where they sat. The other kids called her four eyes. She had long, stringy red hair. Everyone had long, stringy hair — it was the seventies. Still, the other kids chanted, “red head, red head, fire in the woodshed” every day at recess. She wore hand-me-down clothes that the other kids called high water pants and chanted “bird legs” every day at recess. She had two huge, crooked front teeth that made her look like a beaver so she never smiled in a picture or any other time that she could help it. Her nose was too big for her face. So were her lips.

She was a dismal child and mostly kept to herself. She read books all the time. She loved to read books from the Anne of Green Gables series because Anne was also a red head who wasn’t pretty. Except Anne grew up to be beautiful and loved. She dreamed that the same thing would happen to her one day. She loved A Little Princess because Sara was saved from the mean people in the end. She loved Laura Ingalls and hated Nellie Olsen. She loved lots of books but she hated herself.

Her mother was disappointed with her because she was so ugly and didn’t seem to have any friends. She never noticed that the little girl loved to read and brought home straight A report cards every time. She only saw that the child was ugly.

A few years later the little girl began to write stories but she didn’t believe the teachers who told her she was good at it. She wasn’t good at anything and she knew it because the first thing you have to be good at is being pretty and making friends. Nothing else counted if you couldn’t do that.

A couple of more years pass and you find the little girl an awkward adolescent. One of her teachers has entered her in the state spelling bee. She studies long lists of words alone in her bedroom night after night. No one ever quizzes her or helps her study. The day of the spelling bee arrives and she is dropped off outside a big building and left there alone. She doesn’t know where she’s supposed to go but she finally figures it out. All the other kids have parents with them. All the other kids have people in the audience. Too bad she’s so ugly or she might have parents there too. They must be ashamed of her. She takes 24th place and gets her name in the paper. Second from the bottom, there she is. No one cut it out and saved it.

Fast forward thirty years and you see that the little girl is now a woman with a daughter of her own. Her daughter is very pretty but she doesn’t like to read and she doesn’t care about straight A’s. She watches Anne of Green Gables on DVD instead of reading the books. She won’t be entering any spelling bees.

The little girl that is now a woman is disappointed with her daughter.