I will never make it that far in life...
I even got my damn African glasses knocked off when I tried to go to the boy’s playground and interview them. They had a non-racist playground going. We had a racist, tallist, shortest, Jewest, Christian, fat girl segregated playground going, and somehow, if it meant something to us that we were evil incarnate, that worked for everyone else but me. Me? Nuh uh.
No fat girl section on the playground. All the girls were getting ready for an unknown zone called Basic Training for Viet Nam, I guess. They had to keep their figures.
I had to go to each segregated section of the playground, interviewing every evil loser queen on it, because the black girls were winning on our Negativity Playground.
As I went through life, I became the heroic Lost Girl Journalist in it. Yeah, there is now Jeanne Emerson, is there not? I was never able to become a tall white male journalist.
First I saw the black girl section, three black girls there, saw them skippin’ rope like sixty double dutch, and said to myself, “I can’t do that, what’s up with that? I know what. There’s a section of the playground I can play in.” I did a limp wrist at them and said aloud, “Ah, tha’s jus’ them,” and moved on to the white girls who were skipping rope. They hated me completely becuase they had forgotten what they were doing while being forced into doing it.
It wasn’t even double dutch, and I still couldn’t handle it. I jumped a teeny bit, and moved on. For I was the fat girl, I was ALWAYS new there, and there was no such fat girl section on the playground. But as I moved on, I headed towards the boy’s section of the playground, and as I walked toward it, thinking they wouldn’t mind, a white boy with black hair saw me, and threw the ball as hard as he possibly could.
It was a basketball and it zoomed straight into my face and knocked off my glasses because it didn’t hit very hard after all. I started to cry, contained myself, and picked up my glasses. There was no glasses section on the playground. I put my glasses back on and continued, as my part Indian self and part black self woke up, and knew it wasn’t Jesus Christ the Lord. I sighed. I would tell them something, somehow, but I didn’t know what. Some say I never did.
I moved on. Eventually there was the tall girl section of the playground. As I had previously exhibited courage, they let me in. Probably the tall Catholic girls. Dunno. They let me in conditionally, conditionally to what, I do not know. When I admitted I favored Indians, especially Indian chiefs, they kicked me out.
Wow. I next move on to the segregated Jewish and Christian or mostly Jewish or whatever section it was, cottoned to it being the Jewish section right away, you know Christians, they read both books…I hung out with them for this:
Miss Lucy had a steamboat
The steamboat had a bell
Miss Lucy went to heaven
The steamboat went to hello
Operator, give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll kick you in the behind
The refrigerator
There was a piece of glass
Miss Lucy sat upon it
And broke her little ask me
No more questions
I’ll tell you no more lies…
So I added the last line, already, already. Which was the boys are in the ----room
Making chocolate pies.