You think you're so cute, don't you?

One day in Grade six I walked into my first period math class to see Juan Rivera there early, sitting alone by the window. When I walked in, Juan Rivera gave me the dirtiest look and said, full of scorn, ' you think you are so cute, don't you?' For most of my young school days I was a pretty popular girl. I was also a pretty, popular girl. I had a perm, Mang. I never had to deal with too much adversion. Hearing this from Juan Rivera changed the course of my life. He introduced me to self-contemplation and low self- esteem. That prick. Do I really think I am so cute? Am I full-of myself? What does everyone think of me? Do I act like I am better than everyone else?

Sometimes I think that maybe Juan was a genius. I have no shortage of examples of stories where I harass people because I know better than they do only to find out later I have no idea what I am talking about. I don't mean politics or science trivia or anything important- just the mundane stuff. i take that really seriously though.

Take Alexander, for example. He's german and he has what I thought were Euro-teeth. By Euro-teeth I mean not American teeth: factory-style chicklet teeth that are blindingly white and perfectly straight from bleaching and braces (like mine). He also has a front tooth that has a small brown line through it. One time it came out that he used to smoke. a lot. Naturally, i assumed that he had gotten this brown thing from smoking. I think I am so cute, don't I? I seem to remember that one time we were talking about smoking and I even said to him (baring my teeth and pointing to them) "See! See my teeth. I never smoked ever and they are really white and nice. Look what happens when you smoke!" He didn't say anything or even look at me strange because he is a better person than I am. Oh, I won that one. Yes. I am so righteous. I never smoked and I have perfect teeth! Not too long ago I was talking to Alexander's brother and flying a kite with my nephew who was running down the middle of a city street, the wrong way, trying to keep the kite up. Then, comes the famous story about how Alexander did the same thing as a kid. He was running so fast he smacked face first into the hood of a parked car and broke his front teeth. So, yeah. Not smoking. Flying a kite. That 'brown line' was the post holding the tooth together. You were right, Juan.




Today Alexander was at the dentist and they redid his front tooth since it hadn't been done for 30 years. They're all white now.