Different

I was swimming in my neighbor's charming above-ground pool which I coveted at the time. I was probably 10 or 11 and didn't know any better that it was tacky and gross. All I remember was that it was totally fun and I wanted one in our yard (my mom made sure that never happened, much to her credit).  The next door neighbor kids who I liked to play baseball with, a sister and brother, both of whom were sweet, nice and younger than me, told me their cousin was visiting and to come over for a swim. So I asked my mom, she said yes and I leapt headlong into my navy blue one-piece and ran over, my sneakers flopping off my heels because I was in too much of a rush to tie the laces.

I don't remember a lot about the cousin other than that she was closer to my age than my friends, my neighbors. She eyed me warily as I jumped in, feet first, holding my nose (something I still do, never once trying or even attempting to learn how to dive). I remember feeling happy and exhilarated and excited to talk to someone new and my age - finally. My cousins were much older than me, like my siblings were, so this was a novelty and didn't happen every day on Ridge Street.

I must have sensed something, my fight-or-flight kicking in, my bully-meter already on high alert and I didn't even know it. I joked with my friends, we laughed, we tossed a beach ball like we always did and then She caught it, moved it to the side of her body and looked at me. I caught the look out of the corner of my eye and waited for something to happen. She made me feel it was coming and she, and I, were right.

I remember the look, but I don't remember her face, if that makes sense. I remember the disdain, the judgment, the hovering moment of peace and happiness that bristled in the air for a split and final second: Is this the moment where my innocence was lost? Is this the moment when everything changed, where my self-confidence, at one time a hallmark of my personality (just ask my teachers) and something the grown-ups marveled at when they came over ("She's so independent. She can amuse herself on her own for hours. You're so lucky to have a child like that.") ... evaporated? Just thinking about the seconds before the moment she said what she said makes me remember how wonderful the whole universe was before that instant. It was a place where Mom and Dad kissed goodbye in the morning and hello at night, where we waited to have dinner with Dad because ... are you kidding? Eat without him? Where my grandparents still lived a few hundred yards away and my siblings, one in college now, one already out and working in the coolest job in the world (at least to me) at the U.N., of all places, loved me and treated me like gold, not a pariah, not an annoying little sister hell-bent on driving them batty. Everything was great in that moment. And then in the next, she took it away:

"Were you born with that face or are you sick or something?"

I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach, the hot flash that went from my toes to my scalp despite being immersed in ice cold pool water up to my neck. I remember thinking: Did my parents not tell me something? Was there something wrong with me and I am just now finding out? From this stranger with the ice in her blood and knives in her eyes? My friends, stunned, lost, looked away and started a game of catch with the beach ball, together ... two siblings, close in age, guarding each other in a war zone. The cousin smirked and dove in, no nose-holding, sort of splashy but a dive and not a jump, just the same. I got out of the pool and went home.

Some meaningless little girl from God knows where who, for all I know, never amounted to much, still stole something from me on that hot summer afternoon. If it had not been her, it would have been someone or something else. That's life. And really, was what she said really all that bad? To my 10 or 11 year old idealistic heart - you bet it was. She made me feel like there was something wrong with me. That I looked different, whatever the hell that means, so therefore I was different, and different was bad. And it still is.

If you hear anyone say that Billy Lucas or Asher Brown, Seth Walsh or Tyler Clementi didn't have to end their lives because they were taunted for being gay ... that 13 and 15 and 18 year old boys have to know that "it does get better",  that there is always another way remember that someone needs to tell them that as close to the instant it happens for it to really help. I went home that day and my mom smiled at me and told me to take a hot shower and get ready for dinner. That was enough to fix it, for the moment. 38 years later, it still wasn't enough, apparently, to make me forget.  As soon as I heard about the precious boys who couldn't imagine how to go forward one more minute after someone stole their happiness, I knew how they felt. And I wished my mom was there for them, too.