My Life on the Circle

A short story of my life in southern New Mexico as a child.

LIFE ON THE CIRCLE �" by M. Dea Stevens

The grasshopper. I was five years old and Billy Miller from down the street told me to catch a grasshopper, pull its head off and a bunch of tobacco would come out. He watched me. I didn't want to be a fraidy cat. I picked up the grasshopper and kept staring at it. Billy kept nodding and saying, "Do it, do it!" I did. He was right, brown gooey stuff came out. I looked at its little head in my other hand trying to find a way to put it back. I couldn't. At that moment I realized animals are just like us - they feel, eat, sleep, work, play and die.

The burial. Billy shook his head, laughed, and walked on to his next victim.  I knelt on the ground and dug a hole with my fingers and laid his little head and body in it. I covered him with dirt, then I looked around and found some clover blossoms. I put them on top of the little grave. Sometimes we can't make things right, but we can make them better.

Billy. Now Billy wasn’t mean. He always wore a big cowboy hat and cowboy boots. He was the wise man of the neighborhood. He knew everything. He solved problems, he had answers, he told stories. He never really played. He walked around with his hands in his pockets revealing the secrets of life. He commanded respect and got it.  

The twins. I decided to go across the street to play with the Shauffer twins. These two boys looked exactly alike. Identical. That’s what Billy said. Their names were Ronnie and Ritchie. We couldn’t tell them apart, so we always called them both “Ronnie and Ritchie” as though it was one name.  They were always together anyway. The twins weren’t home, so I decided to go to Mrs. Shebler house. She was like my grandma, really old. She was nice and always gave me cookies and gave out apples at Halloween. 

May Day. On May Day I made a paper basket of clover flowers and left it on Mrs. Shebler’s front porch. I wanted to thank her for all the cookies and apples. At school, we braided the May pole. We wore our best clothes. The pole had crepe paper streamers on top, and we each grabbed a streamer and did this little dance weaving in and out and braided the pole. It was pretty. No one ever told us what it meant. We just did it.

Friends. I played football with the guys on the circle (our street was a circle street not a straight one). I was the best kicker on the block, so they let me play with them.  I walked around the circle to find them but the only one out was Dennis. Dennis was different. We were friends, but he didn’t play football. He liked to play with dolls and play dress up.  The other boys made fun of him, but I liked him. He was nice and he didn’t sock me in the arm.

Lunch time. I had to go home.  My mom was the best mom on the circle. She made the best chocolate cake and read us stories every night.   She sewed us pretty dresses and cleaned our room for us.  I keep saying “us” because I had an older sister. I don’t think she wanted me there. I wasn’t allowed to hang around her and her friends.  She pinched me and kicked me and pulled my hair.  But I loved her. When she was in trouble, she acted like my best friend, as though my innocence would rub off on her. I wished we could have been like that all the time. 

The barbershop. My dad was a strong bull. That’s how I saw him. He could do anything. I was his gopher…you know, go for this, go for that. On the weekends, I hung out with my dad.  He taught me to wire a lamp, mix cement, hammer a nail, change the oil in the car. Oh, and football.  You see, I was the second girl. I was supposed to be a boy, so he tried his best to turn me into one. He even took me to the barber shop with him. The barber let me set up in one of the big, red chairs and I could listen to all the guy talk. I loved it! Once, my dad had my hair cut at the barbershop. I looked in the barber’s mirror. I looked like Leave it to Beaver.   

The hardware store.  I loved going with my dad to the hardware store.  It beats any other department store! It had a tool for everything. It doesn’t matter what you need to do, you could find it in the hardware store.  That’s where I got my first lesson about the birds and the bees.  My dad was buying a light plug. The clerk asked him, “You need a male or female?” I took this all in, and ultimately determined, the plugs had to fit together to work.  Much later in life I found out that love is not that simple with people.  I learned that sometimes two males and two females do work together just fine. Just not plugs.

Rolling on. My feet rarely touched the ground on the circle. I was on my bike, my skates, or my scooter most of the time. When I did walk, I was usually barefoot.  Now, in New Mexico we have these weeds called goat heads. When you step on them, they rip through your skin and stayed there. Then my mom would get out the needles, the tweezers, and the iodine.  I tried to hide, but she always found me. “If we don’t get it out, you’ll get an infection!” I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it wasn’t as bad as the needles, the tweezers, and the iodine.

Change. I loved the simplicity of life back then. Except for bad weather days, we were outside every day. We didn’t have to get our vitamin D out of a bottle. Gluten and lactose intolerant weren’t invented yet. We had milk and bread at every meal. We sat together at the dinner table and talked about the day. School busses only picked up country kids. The town kids walked to school. It was safe then.  And times were different.  

Over time, things change. At 13 years old I “changed”. I don’t think my dad ever forgave me for growing up.

Speaking of change, technology has changed us all. It’s made us smarter and stronger and faster. That’s the way it should be, I suppose. If we don’t change, our spirit dies. When this young generation gets old, they will say things like, “Remember when we had to carry those cell phones everywhere!” Or they’ll think about the good old days of laptops and blue tooth. Facebook and Twitter will still be here, I think.  They provide us a form of anonymity which helps people like me to be brave enough to voice my opinion in public.  Unfortunately, it also encourages nut jobs.  Oh well, the good with the bad is the way life works.

My final pearl of wisdom from a 70-year-old mind:

Cherish the past but embrace now. It’s all we have. Its our job to make it work.

Peace.