Miss Popularity

As a new kid in elementary school, I always made lots of friends. A nomad, an exotic, I knew some tricks. And there's probably no greater testament to my consistent popularity than to say -- other kids traded lunch with me. 

Lunch trading was rather a big deal; it solidified your membership in a crowd. 

And I knew when I hit the sweet spot, the inner circle, because my new friends would slide their fluffer-nutter peanutbutter on Wonderbread in my general direction, in exchange for a sandwich of hard salami on pumpernickel slathered in Dijon mustard and topped with Roquefort. 

Nothing spelled devotion like trading a Twinkie for my apple, a bag of Fritos for my hard boiled egg.

What can I say? My mom's idea of a school lunch could have taken three sherpas up Mount Blanc and back.

At the end of lunch period, Kim and Mary and Lynne would surreptitiously wrap the remains of my trade, and almost all of it remained, in a napkin to toss away when they thought I wasn't looking.

(What they didn't know is that a new kid in a new environment is constantly on the alert.)

I didn't like their fluffer-nutter either, so we probably all would have starved had it not been for the deliciousness of chocolate milk in a melting wax pint container.

Most of all, though, perhaps my popularity had something to do with my slumber parties.

Everyone came to my slumber parties, and not for the food, They knew I'd have nothing on offer but sliced pears, apple quarters, and grapes. 

They came for the horror-fest. The promise to plunge the thumb of the first girl sleeping into a cup of water. Guaranteed to make her pee in her sleeping bag. (An urban slumber party myth, as this never actually worked).

And the Closet of Terrors. Whoever lost some game or other would get locked in the closet with three sadists and tickled until she peed. (Now this one may have actually worked.)

But mostly the popularity of my slumber parties hinged on my story telling abilities.

Because at midnight, I'd tell this tale:

A girl married a man and this girl always wore a blue ribbon around her neck. "Why do you always wear that blue ribbon around your neck?" her husband asked. And she said, "Someday, I'll tell you." So every year he would ask "Why do you wear that blue ribbon around you neck?" And she'd say "Someday, I'll tell you." And then when she was dying, her husband asked, "Why do you wear that blue ribbon around your neck?" And she said, "Pull the ribbon." And he did, and her head fell off.

I held a flashlight under my chin. As though, as though, such terror would need a prop; an extra drop of drama.

And then, almost as if on cue, my mother would enter the room.

"Anyone for more grapes?  Peaches? Some knockwurst? I can also whip up some blue cheese on Parmesan crusts, or a fig-compote."

Between me and my mom, we horrified these kids all night, and then from midnight to morning.