i had this red dress in first grade.

it was soft and velvety, full around the waist down to the newly scraped knees and went perfectly with my shiney black buckle shoes and white socks, neatly folded down so that the lace at the top of the tube brushed delicately upon the strap across my foot.

oh it was a beautiful dress.

but my mother never let me wear it save for "special" occasions. like a wedding, or a baptism, or, on one glorious day in the first grade, when the photographer came to take our class picture.

even then it was somewhat of a feat to get my mother to let me wear the dress to school. she seemed to be convinced that i would disrespect the dress and use my thirty minute play breaks to trompe through the mud or roll around on the asphalt. i suppose in the end, she just figured that it was just a dress and that in a few months, it would no longer fit me anyhow. why not indulge your daughter in a few simple pleasures? take a risk?

and so, dutifully, i set my dress out the night before, picked out my favorite socks, dug through my little box of bows until i found a length of ribbon to tie over my ponytail holder. it would certainly be a great day, the morrow. certainly.

it happened that my class would be taking our pictures right after lunch, immediately following the bell that signalled the end to all that is happy.

it also happened that that was the same lunch that i met mikey, mikey whose last name has temperarily escaped me even though his existance will never do the same. that was the day that mikey [---] discovered what it was like to kick a girl in the shins (undoubtedly the result of never having a sister of his own) and the day that he discovered what it was like to be kicked in the balls. yes, dear mikey, who felt it to be his duty to run after me full speed and slam against my back with his chest, knocking me to the ground at the beginning of the field that we weren't allowed to enter due to the lack of lunch time supervisers and the number of naughty acts in which a young child might engage in the outskirts beyond the backstop. yes, i can image that making daisy chains would be trecherous. quite frankly, i am sure i can think of a number of events that could be performed behind that fence that would be less invigorating and restricted than the result of my undeveloped breast becoming one with the barely damp mud, slimey and full of gravel.

i'm sure my mother didn't mind that my dress was ruined as much as she minded that she had to come to school that day and explain my outward agression towards mikey.

i'm sure she didn't mind that my dress was ruined when mikey's mother appeared in the hallway across from the secretary's desk, shocked and furious at the sight of her son's face, bloody and encrusted with mud.

she might have tried to excuse my actions by muttering something along the lines of "three older siblings... developed something of a physical response to being picked on..."

well, she would have excused the devestated dress but the school never called her. i'm not sure if she ever found out about the dress at all. it turns out mud is machine washable and my father seems to support self defense--- he was, afterall, the one who saw the filthy dress.

and mikey? he is something of a teacher. taught me to never turn your back on a boy.