A Letter to My Former Self

Dear Fifth Grade Dianne:

This year was both awkward and a lot of fun. Your mom finally let you shave your hairy legs! Yay! The next morning, while sitting in the hallway admiring your smooth, chubby calves you couldn't contain yourself and blurted your excitement to a girl sitting across the hallway. "I shaved my legs yesterday for the FIRST time! Look how shiny they are!!"

This isn't the first time another girl is going to look at you like you're an idiot, roll her eyes and ignore you.  Get ready for a lot of that. For the rest of your life. Girls are assholes to each other, but ... It's kind of your fault. You say dumb shit sometimes. It gets better though. Don't be hard on yourself. You're still immature. (You learn that word in 5th grade. Nanci tells you you're immature all the time. She learned that word in 5th grade too and became obsessed with it.) Don't worry. You eventually learn how to make "weird" work for you. You get cuter and that helps. Also, you're going to grow large boobs in middle school and you announce it to NO ONE.  

Oh, Dianne. You have no sense of fashion you sloppy, confused little tomboy. Yeah, you wore your pink bathing suit with a black skirt. You thought people would think it was a pink tank top, but it even had some kind of shiny, cartoon print on the front of it. Nanci was horrified to be your friend that day. I'm sorry, but I really don't know what you were thinking. Unfortunately, you don't start dressing better until your 30s. You don't understand the importance of "accessorizing" until about 32. Until then, look forward to baggy clothes and concert  t-shirts. And not many boyfriends.

Here's where I was proud of you:
You made a diaper out of paper and then squeezed a whole tube of Clearasil into the crotch. You got caught passing this to a classmate. When Mr. Howard held it up in front of the class and yelled, "WHAT is THIS?"  you calmly looked at him like HE was an idiot and said "It's a dirty diaper" but you said it with a face that read, "What does it look like you boring, old, crotchety asswipe? It's a shitty diaper."

You were severely punished at home later, but I'm still proud of you. From this day forward you continue to blend gross with humor and your prissy friends will not like it and your will torture them with it. Ask Anita. She still talks about the day your frisbee'd a paper-thin, road kill frog into her perm.  (I'm smiling right now.)

You will stay friends with Tammy forever. She's odd too. She was there with you when you dumped the make-up out of the pink, sectional make-up tray you got for Christmas and used it to collect bugs. She gets you and you get her.

Anyway, keep your head up, chubbo. Middle school is coming and it's not going to be easy. You develop an intense love for delinquent Asian boys, Robert Smith and really high bangs. But, so does everyone.

Have fun.