The Sun Shines Brightest in June (Completed) gxg

Tuesday, July 1, 2003

It was three days before the 4th of July. Anna was complaining about how hot it was. I think the temperature may have been somewhere around eighty-five. We spent most of the day down at the beach, cooling ourselves off in the water. Our mothers made a picnic out of it by bringing a cooler full of lunch and drinks for us to share while we took a break on towels in the sand.

I laid back on mine and closed my eyes. Klara was next to me with another towel wrapped around her upper body. She sat up and tried to rid her feet of the sand that stuck to them. Next to her, Caleb and Timothy were digging into a bag of chips, and laughing about some alleged crush Timothy had on a girl in his class. At nine and seven years old, they still believed that girls had "cooties." Timothy tried to deny his crush, but honestly, we had already head about her at least five times that summer. I didn't know who he was trying to fool more... us, or himself?

That was the day that I began to wonder why I hadn't had any crushes except for that one boy the year before we came to the summerhouse. Honestly speaking, I had never even considered that a real crush. Sure, he was cute, and I liked to play games with him at recess, but that's about as far as it ever went. Again, I wouldn't have missed him much if he wasn't around.

That past year in school, since I had been in fifth grade, we finally got to learn about puberty and all of that fun stuff about the differences between girls and boys. Honestly speaking, it was an awkward experience for all involved. They separated us into two rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys, and made us watch videos that I felt would scar me for the rest of my life.

One of the videos in particular, talked about feelings, and how us girls would supposedly start to notice boys more. In the video it was described as perfectly normal; a thing that all girls would experience, just like periods, which sounded about as fun as trying to shave my now hair-growing legs with a dull, rusted butter knife.

The point is, I still hadn't taken a particular interest in boys. It felt like the video had lied, or like I was the odd one out in my class. The other girls seemed to go right along with the video, and my friends' sudden interest to only talk about the boys started to get on my nerves a bit. I was the odd one out, and I could never relate.

Maybe I was slower than the rest of the class. I mean, we were told that not all girls experienced these changes at the same time. That had to be it. One of these days I was going to catch up to the other girls in my class. One of these days I was going to be normal too.