Pterodactyl seems to be doing quite well, though she must be getting squished in there. I'm starting to kind of identify lumps on my belly. Sometimes--eep! That is a FOOT! Also, ouch. It's kind of creepy to watch my belly warp and ripple like... well, a wiggly baby underneath a blanket of... skin, fat, and muscle.
As many of you have likely realized from my fairly frequent Facebook updates, I'm tired of being pregnant, even though I potentially have another four weeks to go. I'm always exhausted and frequently sick and weak. Of course, I have turned to the Lord for help. His main advice is: "It's going to continue to suck. I know it's hard. You should try and serve others. Focusing more on the needs of others will help."
To be honest, I'm a little stumped here. The main problem I have is that I've been feeling bad enough to stay home. And I don't discover other people's needs while sitting at home on my butt. How the heck am I supposed to serve others when I can hardly serve myself a meal? So that's my main dilemma for the moment.
I originally prefaced this post with "This'll likely be a short post" but those three short little measly paragraphs above just seemed so... lonely. Thus, I decided that since yesterday's post was a little depressing, I'd share a little bit of the happier followup memories.
After the torture of second grade, I ended up in Chandler's gifted* program: Chandler Academically Talented Students (CATS)... or something like that. I thought CATS was a great name for the program, because guess what? My most favoritest animal ever was the cat. I had a million cat stuffed animals and had read every book in the library which even remotely touched upon felines. So I liked that I was going to a CATS class.
Third grade was when I first became known popularly as Jenna rather than Jennifer. On the first day of class, Mrs. O'Neal took roll. After she had read "Jennifer Griffin", she asked, "What do you want us to call you?" This was such a novel question. It had never occurred to me to go by anything besides my full first name, but the idea had instant appeal. I remembered being called Jenny by relatives when I was really young, but I wanted something fresh and entirely new. I responded to the teacher's question: "Jenna".**
In retrospect, I guess the "name change" could be seen as symbolic or something. I was getting a new start to life! Woohoo! It really was kind of like a new life. It was refreshing to be surrounded by other kids who were passionate about learning--kids whose idea of fun consisted of imagination and creation rather than torture of a kid who was different. And guess what?
Pretty soon, I was friends with not just one of these kids, but many of them. It was amazing to have friends who appeared to like me despite my curious and socially-unacceptable habit of acting like a cat. Heck, they didn't even make fun of me in PE, and if there was ever a time to make fun of me, it was in PE. I was not particularly athletically skilled... I guess spending my recesses at the wall reading in years past had come back to bite me in the butt.
Which brings me to another good change. Instead of reading during recess, I actually played with the other kids. I have a hard time differentiating in my head which games we played during which years, since I played with mostly the same group of kids for the rest of elementary school, but I think we might have played swing spaceships in third grade. We'd all get on the swings, pretending that our swings were our own little one-person spaceships. Then we'd yell to each other through the air resistance swing-wind noise, describing all the things we encountered in our space journeys. I think my planet was Catopia. It was shaped like a cat's head, and even had whiskers. (Don't ask about the astrophysics on that one...)
One day in March, though, I suddenly found that everyone was avoiding me during our lunch recess. My group of friends that I usually followed around tried to give me the slip as soon as they had finished their lunches. I was confused--they were all terrible liars. (It's pretty difficult to lie consistently if you're making it up on the spot, and the rest of the group doesn't know or remember what the original lie was.) I eventually figured out that what they were telling me wasn't actually true--they very clearly were trying to get me to go away. I gave in and let them leave. It hurt to see them looking so grateful to get away from me.
I was pretty devastated. In my mind, this meant I had suddenly lost all my new friends in one fell swoop. Well, I still wanted to play with somebody and there were still the other kids in the class. To my intense dismay, however, as soon as I approached any of the others, they too got incredibly uncomfortable and, just like my friends, started to spout off poorly-thought-out lies.
And, one by one, I began to notice that my classmates were disappearing from the playground. How could I fail to notice their mysterious disappearances when I was desperately searching for people I knew? I eventually gave up when I could no longer hold my tears back. In my hopes to avoid the gazes of other kids outside, I found a swing and swung as high and as fast as I could, thinking that perhaps it would be difficult to tell I was crying if I was just a blur.
The bell rang. I got down from the swing, dried my tears as best as I could, and made my way to line up with my classmates to go back to the classroom. I was surprised to find that I was the first one lined up. This never happened, as I was one of the slowest kids in the entire third grade.
Where was everybody? I supposed that they must have been hiding from me for the entire recess, and were still in their hiding spots. Surely they'd come out eventually. They'd get in trouble for not coming back from recess, right?
Mrs. O'Neal came to collect her line of students. She stood there for a little bit, as if waiting for the others. I looked around... still no sign of the others. I began to tear up again. Wow. They must really hate me if they'd rather get in trouble than stand next to me. Mrs. O'Neal, however, seemed oddly unfazed by her incredibly shrunken class size. "Guess it's just you," she eventually quipped cheerily, and she turned to walk back to our classroom. I followed her dejectedly, feeling awkward.
Mrs. O'Neal unlocked the classroom door and opened it wide, holding the door open for me and gesturing for me to get a move on. It was dark in there--strange--but I went in anyway.
And then the lights came on. All the missing people jumped up excitedly, shouting enthusiastically, "SURPRISE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" I was, indeed, surprised.
Now, I'd heard of surprise parties before, but it hadn't crossed my mind that I would ever receive one. And it definitely hadn't occurred to me that people were ditching me in order to decorate for my birthday party that day, because, well... my birthday wasn't for another two months. My birthday was May 24th, but somebody thought it was March 24th.
I was pretty shocked. There were cake and goodie bags, which I guess some parents had put together. And I was extremely relieved that my classmates did not hate me. I also felt a little silly for thinking that they did, and wondered why I hadn't been more suspicious after having noticed a handful of them going to our classroom. (I had at least jiggled the classroom door handle in an attempt to follow them, but it was locked, and I couldn't get in.) But the main thing I felt was happiness. I think the party lasted the rest of the afternoon.
So there. A nice happy memory (though oddly, still traumatic) to make up for yesterday's not-so-happy memories. I have no idea how that birthday party came about. I'm mystified. None of the other kids got birthday parties. Every once in a while, I sit and wonder who the heck thought, "Hey, see that kid acting like a cat over there? Let's throw her a surprise birthday party!" I had always considered myself to be in the lowest quartile with regards to social skills, and even though people liked me, I wouldn't have called myself popular. I guess it shall remain a mystery.
Hopefully giving birth/being born any day now***,
Jenna and Pterodactyl
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*I am always hesitant to use this word, as it seems to imply you are only gifted if you are academically gifted. That, of course, is certainly untrue, and I think it is an unfortunate semantic problem... and I'm not quite sure how to solve it.
**My dad was shocked and perhaps a little dismayed when he learned I had shortened my name to Jenna. I'm not entirely sure why. This was a bizarre response to me (still is). If I had to guess at the reason, I'd say he was a little put out that I wasn't fond enough of my full name--which he had chosen with care--to use it regularly. When he found out I was going by Jenna, he told me that he had always loved the name "Jennifer Marie" and had always wanted to give that name to his daughter. Because my dad was so disappointed, I felt super guilty and tried to get people to call me Jennifer again. It didn't work, though... There were always enough people around calling me Jenna that even when I introduced myself as Jennifer, new acquaintances were calling me Jenna in no time.
***Ah, who am I kidding? I probably won't go into labor until I'm 41 weeks or something.
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