Remember the time I was from another planet?

So when I was in elementary school I liked to use my imagination. Probably the most fun and imaginative thing that I thought of was the planet UHHHH. My three best friends and I thought we were from this planet. It kind of became an obsession. We would go to this wonderful place called FunScape on the weekends, and one weekend we put all our prize tickets together to get a colorful battery powered disco ball on a stick. When we had planet meetings, which happened quite frequently, we would turn off the lights and turn on the glowing ball.

Like all good aliens, we had special names too. They changed pretty often though. With the change of the millenium I became ZooGirl2000. Before that we had a fruit theme and I was Lemono. At one point I'm pretty sure I was weirdo. One of our favorite things to do on UHHHH was make home made play dough. However, we renamed it Galactic Goo. Then, we would put the goo in bags and sell it to the other kids in the neighborhood for 50 cents. It was a pretty lucrative business. The thing that we did most often on UHHHH was make up dances to our favorite pop songs. Any Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, Britney Spears, or 98 degrees song you can name, we probably made up a dance for it. We would even perform them for the otehr kids sometimes. I don't know why our parents let us humiliate ourselves that way, but nonetheless it happened.

Being from another planet even won me my first blue ribbon. At Great Bridge Intermediate School there was a young authors competition. I wrote a story about being on UHHHH with my friends. I talked about the bad guys (Goombas) chasing us and how we had to get away. I got first place in the prose category that year. When they gave me my ribbon and asked about my story I told them it was a true story...my poor mother.

Most people would be embarrassed to admit that for a few years they were convinced they were from another planet. Especially one with a name like UHHHH. But I am not. I had so much fun being an alien with my friends. Someday I may even go back to UHHHH and see how the Goombas are doing. AllGirls2000 woo hoo!

The Youngest

There are stereotypes for every position in a family. Like Sarah Margaret was the oldest so she got away with more, but is now more responsible. Dennis is the middle child so he is forgotten sometimes, which he can work to his advantage. I am the youngest. It seems that I am also the weirdest, but I think they are related. When we were all in elementary and middle school we fought like most siblings do. Dennis and Sarah Margaret would tend to gang up on me though. A typical scenario: we are all on the trampoline and I am trying to talk. Dennis would say, "Marg, do you hear something?" Sarah Margaret would always reply, "No, I think it is just some moss growing on that tree." Then they would just ignore me. Another example: I had an earlier bed time than they did so one night before I went to bed they told me that vampires lived in the space between my bed and the wall. Naturally, I went to bed terrified and I thought that vampires were going to eat me in the middle of the night. This would be bad enough, but they took it one step further. They hid in said space between my bed and the wall and right when I had fallen asleep they jumped out and screamed! It was one of the scariest moments of my life and they were just laughing. There are numerous other examples of them doing similar things to me.

I think that there actions caused me to be a little weird. I spent a lot of time alone. Whenever I was mad at them I would curl up in the Dogloo with my puppy. Also, there was a great tree in our backyard and I spent a long time just sitting in the tree alone. The weirdest thing I did to be alone was I spent a whole day digging a hole in the backyard so that I could have my own cave. My dad filled it in as soon as he came home. However, it was going to be the best cave ever.

Sarah Margaret says it is not fair to blame my weirdness on her and Dennis, but I stand by my position that it is their fault.

PS I did have friends when I was young...I was not a complete loser, although I realize that it sounds like I was