Member-only story
Life is Not Fair
The Lesson I Learned in the First Grade
We sat in the library while the librarian read a boring book. There were 34 of us first graders. I was five at the time. The library was in a school in Queens, NY. It was full of working class kids from all over the world.
There was the cute boy from Armenia a friend dared me to kiss during recess. There were two girls with long hair that I always wanted to touch — one was from Milan and had locks like pale burnished wood, the other was Nicaraguan and had silky black tresses.
A Jewish boy and two Muslim girls didn’t eat the school lunches because they couldn’t eat pork. My parents were Hindu, so Mom always packed me a vegetarian lunch. A Greek classmate often scolded me to eat meat, because otherwise I wouldn’t grow up strong.
The class bullies were a Korean boy and an Irish girl. He made us cry by saying mean things, she hit people when they least expected it. The class misfit was a quiet Samoan who daydreamed and sometimes picked his nose.
That day, we all sat in the library bored until one little girl spoke up.
She had dirty blond hair and blue eyes. She asked the librarian if we could read another book, because this one was boring. She didn’t even raise her hand, she just spoke up.
