Since kindergarten, the enemy (PPs) has been drawn to me. It's the classic battle of Good vs. Evil; they can’t resist the temptation. PPs are predatory by nature and constantly seek out potential victims, preying on the weak-minded and people who seem like they’ll stay silent. Sometimes that potential victim appears to them as a pensive young girl with her nose in a book, just minding her business. Here’s some news for you if you didn’t already know:
It’s a trap, b*tch!
A lot of people don't like to think of children as PPs; it makes them uncomfortable. But they have to start somewhere.
PP#1 made himself known immediately.
Everyday it was something new: loud and frequent tantrums; an incredible level of violence: the cops were called once for threats PP#1 made toward our teacher and teacher’s aid—in kindergarten, mind you; an extreme lack of respect for authority figures: our teacher’s skirt ripped during one tantrum of his; later on, PP#1 revealed he ripped it on purpose to humiliate her in front of the class.
Our teacher’s attention was constantly redirected toward PP#1 and his antics. It was literally never-ending with this kid.
While PP#1 terrorized our classroom, I stayed above the madness, doing my work and minding my business. I guess PP#1 wasn’t used to not receiving huge amounts of attention. Everyone else fell for it, but not me. This confused and angered him.
One day while perfecting my tumbling routine during free play, PP#1 ran up behind me, grabbed my butt, and flipped me to the ground head first. I sat up dizzy, head pounding, nose bleeding—and furious. Luckily, the kindergarten aid saw all this go down and promptly informed the teacher, who sent PP#1 to the principal’s office while I went to the school nurse.
That's the thing about PPs: they might seem like normal people up to a certain point, but you'll always find serious flaws in their logic… major oversights. PP#1’s major oversight was spilling all his secrets to me. Even though he flipped me that day and bloodied my nose, I was one of the few other kids he talked to in class, precisely because I was quiet. He had the balls to say to me one day that he didn’t know I could speak until he made my nose bleed. I thought back to my older cousin and how we love us some curious, stupid motherf*ckers. After PP#1 said that, I decided to show this kid just how big my voice actually is.
In first grade, I had the pleasure of having PP#1 in my class again. One day, he made the incredibly unwise decision to try me again, this time with another boy as his partner-in-crime. PP#1 told me that they were going to rape every girl in the classroom, including the teacher. He said he’d start with me because I was the smartest… like that makes any sense.
Before he could even finish his sentence and approach, I stabbed PP#1 in the eye with a No. 2 pencil. (They never see the left hook coming.) The other boy ran away while PP#1 writhed in agony on the ground.
The teacher ran over and escorted him to the nurse’s office. She came back sometime later that afternoon without him, and resumed teaching as if nothing had happened. It was the first time in two years that our classroom was silent and us kids could learn in peace.
After school that day, the teacher asked me what happened earlier with PP#1. She said I had “Got him good,” and since I was typically about mine and not a violent person, she wanted all the deets. So I gave up everything, starting with the flipping incident in kindergarten. The color left her face after I told her what PP#1 said prior to his stabbing. I asked her how bad the damage was to his eye, but she wouldn’t (or couldn’t) say.
I found out just how bad it was when PP#1 came back to school the following week. He had an eye patch and looked an awful lot like a pirate. I told him to tell the other kids why he looks like that now, and surprise! He couldn’t speak. Every time somebody said something—anything—to him, especially if they were female, his one good eye would tear up. Since PP#1 rarely said anything after his stabbing, I got to say all I wanted, all the time. And our classroom continued to be peaceful.
Until the parent-teacher conference, that is.
The teacher had summoned all of our parents together to discuss the stabbing. PP#1 was there, the boy who ran away, me, and all of our moms. I relished the opportunity to tell everyone The Full Story.
As the teacher introduced everyone, and before I even got around to telling them what PP#1 said right before I stabbed him, PP#1’s mom had an outburst:
She backhanded him in front of all of us. The eye patch had come off by this point, having been replaced by some really thick-lensed glasses that flew across the room. Again, PP#1 said nothing. What can you say to… that?
After reminding PP#1’s mom that the cops were right outside the school building, our teacher instructed me to begin telling The Full Story. I looked over at PP#1’s mom, but the teacher told me to look directly at her and tell it, just as I had a week or so earlier.
After that, we never heard from PP#1 again. His mother immediately withdrew him from the school, and freedom was ours. I told my teacher I was concerned about PP#1’s mom; she was REALLY mad about the whole situation. Teacher told me that she concerned everyone present that day, but with my kind of family and an entire school district on my side, I didn’t have to worry about a thing.
“They’re the ones who should be worried, if not outright terrified of you.” She winked at me.
With PP#1 gone, I continued my reign of the school. Teachers came up off their A+s with ease, and I won quite a few local and national awards for both academics and art in elementary school, all starting in first grade.
Cuzzo was so proud of me. After the parent-teacher conference, my mom and I visited the VIPs again. When we arrived, it was to great fanfare. Little kids were running alongside our car as we parked, trying to get a glimpse. One of my cousins came out, scooped me up, and handed me to Cuzzo, who was standing on the front stoop. As I hung there awkwardly in the crook of his arm, Cuzzo told all the little kids to gather ‘round and observe their queen.
My mom and I both looked up at him like, “Really, Cuz?” and he pointed our gaze toward the block full of kids popping up around us like, “Yeah, really.”
Even though I was mortified at the time, I gotta give it to him: Cuzzo has quite the sense of humor.
And so it was throughout elementary and middle school. Cuzzo taught me much about The Game during those formative years, things that I continue to use today. That one PP I met in kindergarten and destroyed in first grade, Cuzzo told me there’s thousands more out there, waitin’ and underestimatin’. He told me I was related to some of the best PPs out there—or worst, depending on how you look at it. He told me that I already know all their secrets—PP#1 gave up a lot of them voluntarily—and that those secrets can be used against them if they decide to step out of line.
In other words, Cuzzo helped me take my gangsta to a whole new level.
At six years old.
