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Reflections of a Summer Chicken

It feels weird to be 21. I've become too accustomed to filling in 20 as my age whenever I take surveys. Now I've moved into a whole new age bracket.

I have no recollection of being 18 or 19. I don't know why.

I remember being 17 and playing spades with online opponents. I was always the youngest person playing.

I remember being 16, sort of. That was the agonizing Summer Of Waiting For My Driver's License To Arrive. That was the year I found my third and current love. That was the year I flew to Germany and found everything oddly familiar.

I remember being 15. Arrogant, obnoxious, and wielding my first camcorder, I was on top of the world. I knew people, and I was Not To Be Toyed With.

I don't remember being 14.

I was never 13.

I remember being 12 because I was 12 for two years. This age was my golden age--I was becoming smarter and more talented. I was beautiful, briefly. I hated a lot of people, and I made sure my dictionary knew it.

I remember being 11. Middle school was new and challenging, and I discovered my wacky talkative side. I was still scared of authority.

I remember being 10. I was awkward but comfortable with my identity. My friends were at war, split 3 against 1, and I was caught in the middle.

I remember being 9. I holed up for hours reading mysteries, particularly Nancy Drew. My hair was short, but that didn't last long. This was the year I started growing out my bangs.

I remember being 8. I had my best year in elementary school, but I also learned who my true friends were. This was the year I got glasses.

I remember being 7. Cursive writing was a terror, and I didn't understand how to subtract single-digit numbers. My secret crush and I had arm casts at the same time. My secret club members and I all had the same bike.

I remember being 6. I went to three different schools and forgot to learn math. My busdriver loved me, but Patrick Huang told me I was stupid. In an unrelated incident, 7 + 4 = 12.

I remember being 5 because I still had a good memory back then. My mission was to pull all of the staples out of the classroom carpet during naptime. I had to abort.

I remember being 4, barely. I learned to read and write English. I got art supplies and spawned a mass of paintings and drawings. I had a tape recorder for a toy, and my new baby sister was a lobster.

I remember being 3, but only when I'm reminded by photographs. My parents still liked me, and they gave me a metal Band-Aid box to play with.

I don't remember being 2, but the laws of nature suggest that it happened. One possibility in life died, and another was born.

I don't remember being 1, but my parents tell me that gravity was not my friend. This was the beginning of my affinity with the floor.

I don't remember being 0, and my parents don't remember it, either. Try asking them what my first word was, and they won't have a clue. My first sentence was, of course, "I am one with the floor!"

This is my life; this is my truth. This is my reality; this is the Helen.

For anyone reading this, it seems like I go out of my way to say strange things, just for the sake of being weird. This is untrue. I do go out of my way to state things strangely, but this is so the writing will be less stale. The facts are less obvious, and the effect is rather artistic. I will now explain what I really meant by some of the statements.

At the age of 21, I have moved into a new age bracket. Many of the surveys I take seem to separate ages into groups like 13-17, 18-20, and 21-24.

At the age of 16, I found my third and current love, some guy named Jim. My first two loves were the same person. While in Germany, I felt like I recognized a lot of it, as if I had been there before. To my knowledge, I hadn't.

I hated a lot of my friends when I was 12. For some reason, each one of them was getting on my nerves in the worst way. At the time, I was reading the dictionary. Whenever I came across a word I felt was fitting of one of them, I made lengthy notes of it in the margins.

When I was 10...and when I was 9, my friends were having a huge fight. This was of epic proportions, and the effects lasted several years. My friends even got sent to the school counselor to try and work things out. Monica and Michelle (or was it Viraj?) sided with Chandra, and Lauren became the outcast. I couldn't bear to side with either, so I became the neutral middleman. If I had been smart, I would've just found someone new to play with.

When I was 8, we had to write essays about our best friend in the class. You'd think teachers would have the foresight to realize that this could scar kids for life. Anyway, I wrote about Cristen. She wrote about Kelley. Megan wrote about me. I should've just written about Megan.

When I was 7, we learned the rule 'Bottom Bigger, Better Borrow' in math. This was the start of many years of confusion in math. Why can't math books have better directions?

When I was 6, my family moved twice, so I went to three different schools. At the second school, they didn't let me take math class. Instead, they put me in two ELA classes so I could learn English. The bus driver there always gave me candy because I was one of the few quiet kids on the bus. Patrick called me stupid because I didn't understand Chinese. And yeah, I thought 7 + 4 = 12.

I got in trouble for that staple thing when I was 5. The whole incident apparently had such a great impact on me that I keep writing essays about it...and then forgetting that I've already written an essay about it. And therefore writing new ones.

Yeah, my baby sister was a lobster. She would get really red whenever she cried. This would occur at least once a day for many years.

When I was 3, one of my favorite toys was that metal Band-Aid box. I kept cool rocks and kid "treasures" inside. I would emulate my dad by pretending the box was a camera.

When I was 2, my mom had an abortion as an indirect result of something I did. So I lost a sibling and gained the one I have today...because my mother was only planning on having 2 children. The family joke is that I'm responsible for my sister being around today.

Gravity wasn't my friend. My parents dropped me more than once when I was a baby. I also hit my poor little baby skull against my parents' nighttable. And I really like the floor now; I lie on it all the time.

My first sentence was actually, "Where did the cats go?" in Taiwanese. My mom says my sentence just came out of nowhere and totally gave her a fright.