Yesterday I had a text conversation, at the most 10 lines, with a former teacher of a school I once attended. I was inquiring about the death of a former student. The conversation ended when after he suggested I might find a relative of hers on Instagram, I wrote: No, not really interested. She hadn't been very kind to me back then. My mother's theory about why my classmates seemed all L'Enfant Terrible was that they were first born children and that I was the youngest of five, a configuration not otherwise seen in my class. I am not sure why that would have made them especially horrid but horrid they were. One young girl punched me in the stomach each time, under the teacher's direction, I was allowed a drink from the water fountain with a reverse alphabet going first; rather than lining up from Z-A. Another kid, when invited to my home in the Dyckman Street Projects for a sleep over, threw a hissy-fit and demanded to go home when she saw that there was no doorman
mostly gentle, sometimes turbulent