Week 1, People from the Past: Characters of the Future

Her name was Bridgette. A glamorous name among the ordinary Julies and Lisas of our kindergarten class. Bridgette had pierced ears. No one our age, in our vanilla school had pierced ears in 1975. She wore gold hoops; which made her even more exotic as they lay against the thick dark brown hair always tucked behind her ears or swept up off of her neck.
A troubled boy named Tom who came from a broken home threw an orange plastic chair across the cheerful room one day in a rage The metal foot of the chair caught the gold hoop in Bridgette's ear and dragged down the thin wire completely through the soft flesh of her earlobe. The rest of us were caught frozen in that moment as the blood and tears began to flow from Bridgette's head.

Bridgette had called my mother a cow during recess one warm school day. It was the first time someone had brazenly pulled the good name of someone I loved down to an ugly place reserved for childhood squabbles. I immediately told an aide. Bridgette, through squinted eyes aimed at me, told the aide that it was I that had actually called her mother a sow. A lie. I stood, mouth gaping. A solid punch to my gut. It must have been the first blatant false accusation ever made about me, as I recall the moment so well. I can still see the other children hungrily taking in the scene with lusty appetites leaning in close to catch the next blow. I can still feel the warm breezes that swept across the playground's ball field depositing gritty sand between my teeth and the heavy tears that welled up and dropped over my flushed cheeks .

Bridgette was gone the following year. I never thought to wonder where or why. I imagine that she is married with a couple of children. Perhaps she married a successful business man with little time for family. She may spend her days in wealthy suburbia scheduling pedis at the upscale mall and hauling around the latest Dior or Louis Vitton looking forward to cocktails with the girls to show it off. I wonder if her earlobe still bears the scar.