Adina’s Cute & Perky Blog!

I’ll never forget the day of the big win…

Third grade was not a very fun year for me.

That was the year the cops came to evict us from our house. We lived in a motel for months. I switched schools in the middle of the year. My dad took me to see movies such that no child should ever behold, and would leave our family for good that summer.

But in the midst of this all, Ms. Addison was teaching us science through raising a pet.

A pet chameleon.

Oh, how I loved that thing!

When the day came for the cute little green critter to leave the class, there was only one fair way to do it.

Everyone who wanted it would have to pick a number.

I picked eleven.

I remember sitting at my desk thinking, “Please, please, please God, let her pick mine.”

And she did!

I don’t even remember how she picked or drew. I just remember that I WON!!! Me. The unlucky, sad little girl.

And it was with pride and joy I carried that thing home!

My first duty of new pet ownership was a trip to the store to get some pet food for my new friend.

I just knew they’d be cute little doodle pebbles of some kind. I mean, his mouth was so little and cute.

Sometimes brown. Sometimes green.

And I loved him.

And he loved me.

Until….

The wretched, horrible man at the pet store gave me worms to feed him.

“Worms? I have to feed him worms?”

“Yes. They will live in this meal and you give him some every day.”

“I have to feed him LIVE worms?”

And the trip home from the pet store was not nearly as fun as the ride there.

I was now pondering the grossness that is worms. I wouldn’t even know if I was holding them by the head or the butt.

And even with all I had been through that year, THAT was the thing I thought would be my undoing.

But for a little girl going through a tough year, that lizard symbolized the only winning moment of the whole year.

And I fed Eleven a little worm every day.

And what seemed so hard and so wretched was worth the effort to nurture.

Just like when I was heavy and everything I did seemed so wretched and horrible at the time.

But you grow to love things you nurture, whether it be a lizard or, well, yourself.

And I cried when that worm-eating lizard died, but not nearly as hard as I cried the first time somebody called me thin.

Doing those things you think you just cannot do lead to the biggest rewards and best moments.

And to this very day, eleven is still my favorite number.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 4:26 am and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.