Today I am Six Years Old

Six years old. What a terrible year last year was. It changed my life forever. I will never forget the day President Kennedy got assassinated. Just horrible. I don't see a good future. Everything just died with him. It still makes me cry inside. I stared at the TV for days. Caroline is almost my age and John-John---I hope he grows up to be president. Mom says Caroline might too. I am not so sure anymore. I feel sad just thinking about it all.

School--gees. Those kids are crazy. It is like being in an insane asylum. They are so uneducated. We still haven't even started reading yet! They can't read, they can't do math, they cry about wanting their moms like they are babies! One mom sits next to her kid ALL DAY! One kid eats glue. EATS GLUE.

The first months were, just ridiculous. Spent at least an hour for a NAP. I had to take a rug in. Mom had to pay for a RUG for me. Then they want us to drink milk. I hate milk. I don't drink it. The first teacher slapped my hand for not coloring my pumpkin in circles. I DID draw it in circles! Mom was really mad when she heard I was hit. That teacher got fired.

Oh, and when I first started they said I had a speech impediment, that means problem. I can't say caa right! Or poople. I never noticed before. Just those two words. Made Mom cry. School says I have to have speech therapy, but it will probably get worse and stay with me all my life! I can't even hear it, so Aunt Vi bought me a tape recorder and sure enough. I try over and over, everybody tries to help me...I just can't. So I will take some special classes in the summer. God! I cuss like Aunt Vi, when I am alone.

Stopped going with Ivah to church---too many hypocrites! I can hear Mom, "Who taught you that word!?" I don't really know. We were walking home from school one day and I complained about kids calling other kids "homo." Mom stops and looks at me, shocked, "You don't even know what that word means!" I told her it is when a man loves a man and a woman loves a woman. She didn't ask how I knew, we just walked home and she agreed that was not a nice word. I wanted to tell her that I was pretty certain I was a homo, but that would have upset her...I think. I have known for a long time, years, that I was different, not a normal girl. There are no books in the library I could find about it and no one to ask. I think Aunt Vi and Ivah are homosexuals too. It makes sense.

We got a sugar cube for polio. The kids cried. We got a shot, the kids cried like somebody was killing them! What a bunch of babies. I don't know how long I can stand this. Mom says I have to go, for 12 years. TWELVE YEARS?!! I will never make it. I haven't learned a thing except that kids are stupid. And they lie. They can't read, write, add, kindergarten is destroying me.

Mom took me to see The Miracle Worker with Patty Duke playing Helen Keller. I want to be an actress when I grow up. I wish I could be one now like Patty Duke. Now that is a kid I wish I knew. Sometimes I think I never should have been born. I HATE school. My legs turn red from the cold. Girls can't wear pants. I hoped the second half of kindergarten would be better, but it is not. And now president Kennedy is gone. What's the point? My life is over. As long as I live, I will NEVER forget this last year. At least there is Bobby, hopefully he will run for president...I am afraid he will be killed too though. I know that is a stupid thought, but it all seems so fragile now, like no one is safe anymore. I felt safer when we had bomb drills. Black people cried, what happens to civil rights NOW? Makes me sick. Those outside the lines had hope. (Mom: "Where do you GET those ideas from?" I scream inside, "I AM SIX YEARS OLD, MOM!")

I have to buy a lunch box for school, for first grade. Mom said that first grade will be better. She told me not to be so downtrodden about kindergarten. If she is wrong I may kill myself. I mean it. Or run away. I hate my life. Plus I am the only homosexual in Ft Wayne. I should just die now.