Artiste #1 JAY PARK

Now, I may be a lover of Asian Drama but I never did develop any love for KPOP. My other friends obsessed over it like the second coming. I just couldn't get into the grove for the melodies and the tone of the music. I think the first one I ever listened to was 'Bang Bang Bang' by BigBang. I got instantly irritated, I got that feeling I used to get when I had to sit and listen to hours of Indian music back in my Secondary School days. A rinse lather repeat sought of vibe, if you listen to one you have listened to all. That doesn't mean all the music is bad, there usually is that one song that gets stuck in your head and just would not go away sometimes, that catchy ass foot tapping tuning humming song.
But, I have found a compromise and his name is Jay Park. Specifically his song 'Me like Yuh' which YouTube recommended to me. At the end of that song I was like....

Not only was the song danceable, but damn that beat tho!
I think I listened to his entire portfolio that night. My eyes was opened to this genre of music now, not KPOP but Korean Rap and coincidentally Korean RNB. Every song was amazing actually.
Kudos on that black girl in the video even though the ass shaking in videos pisses me off so much.

The mere fact that rappers want people to appreciate their music but the first thing you see when you click on a video is booty meat and boobs. I have enough already why you trying to choke me with other peoples body parts?

Anyway, getting off track.
I dedicating this week as Jay Park Week, a week where I musically stalk him until I can't anymore. It is a known fact these artist would never come to Trinidad for fan meeting or whatever they call them so my only source of getting closer to them is musically stalking them. I hope he continues with his music because I am forever a fan now. I'm just hoping that booty popping train doesnt come for him and the bitches and hoes and champagne train does not whisk him away to the land of 'Intolerable Rappers' and 'Idiots Who Make no Sense'. I don't think Migos and the other names I can't remember need more neighbors.

CHAPTER SIX

There were many instances after that but I don't think it would be wise to put such things on the net. It all revolved around my mother and her behavior but as of now I don't think writing about the behaviors of an alcoholic is good use of my time. What I would like to write for the world to read is how I chose to deal with it and how it is affecting me now. Before I graduated standard five things with my parents were on rocky ground, because they handled us in their own special way. All they knew was to use 'strong arm' and death stares, never stern talks or just asking questions, so I had taken to avoiding my mother at all cost and just down right pretending the egg that produced me was fertilized with magic. Yes we lived in the same house, my mother and I but for three years our conversations consisted of short and sweet phrases such as (1) Good morning greetings, (2) Where is your brother questions and (3) Go down the road and get this demands....
I was okay with it because that was all I knew therefore I never demanded anything other. In February 2005, I came to terms with the fact that my mother hated me, she ignored me for years unless it was to ridicule or shame, forgot everything school wise I had to attend and used me for her personal punching bag when her stress levels were 'too high'. Her cruelty knew no bounds when it came to being around her family though, it was like they brought out the demon in her, it reared its ugly head two days before my S.E.A Exams. She knew I was working really hard on my mathematics because that was my challenge subject, everything else I had good enough marks in but I always lost my cookies when I got asked to add or subtract something. I went full recluse, studying hours in the day just to get those formulas right because I had my eye on a specific prize.
There was always one thing I admired about my mother, her ability to flourish in her learning even though she had seven siblings to take care of when she was younger, handle the demands of a school such as Cowen Hamilton Secondary School and deal with her own mother.

Back in her time as a budding teenager attending such a school, a child's education was not hanging on the prospect of a person getting a salary they think they deserve for lack luster work on their part. When teachers stepped into the school they commanded respect and made you eat knowledge like cereal in the classroom, the things taught today compared to what was taught then pales in comparison and she was able to receive it all while giving her all at home. I attended her reunion year before against my will and the stories I was told about my mother were a little shocking and believable. She played netball for her school, had impressive grades and was a trouble maker. I can't say I took after her because lets be real, I got banned from playing any sport, my grades were looking for me to put in some effort and a was shit-starter of the highest order. So I wanted to see what she saw when she was growing up, in some way I wanted to have something in common with her, so I made getting into Cowen Hamilton my goal to achieve, but in order to have that I had to fix my math problem. Like I said, two days before my exam she came to me and surprised the fuck out of me by offering to let me go live by my father if I got high grades. I didn't ask any questions, the 'yes' just slid out my mouth, I didn't care that I barely knew the man and basically forgot what my brother's looked like, just the mere thought of crossing that Princes Town boundary and going somewhere, anywhere else made me feel like there was hope after all, I didn't have to settle. That deal just made me work even harder, so color me confused when she brought her sisters and rum buddies over and started a party in our yard that lasted the entire last day of studying before my exam that lasted well into the next morning.
For the life of me I can't forget that night, sitting in the living room just staring at the walls with my pencil in my hand on the verge of tears, trying to block out the music, trying to block out the fact that I was hungry, trying desperately to understand why the fuck I BELIEVED she could be my mother for just one day. That night sealed it for me really, she broke something in me that to this day I can't seem to fix, the need to trust someone. It seems far fetched to others who have had a normal childhood with people who know the meaning of "parent" and the meaning of "child" that this could affect my need to trust someone. But what you don't know is that she had no intention of letting me go, it was her sick way of making herself feel better, build me up to watch me fall. I asked her about it the day I got my results and brought it to her, I was so giddy from seeing my marks on that maths exam I think it just made it more sweeter for her to watch me breakdown when she basically called me a liar in front of everyone for saying she told me she would let me go live in town. And that was when I felt it again, that sweet numbness that usually came after anger, that usually got me in trouble, that last appeared that day my father walked away.
Activity after that was a blur, the main things that happened really was that I got placed in a school I didn't even know existed, graduation was a terror, my August holiday consisted of me eating things to feel better and blowing up like a whale and dreading my first day as fresh meat in my new school Barrackpore West Secondary.

CHAPTER FIVE

A while after, one of my mother's relatives passed away. I didn't personally know her per se, to me she was just the lonely old woman who lived in a unfinished house not too far away from my grandmother. Her daughter lived in the city with her new family so the house was just going to stay there and fall apart, until my mother apparently told her a sob story and she basically loaned us the house. No documentation, over seeing of a lawyer or even a blood pact, nothing. Just a verbal agreement between a crazy person and a so called 'police officer'. Things were really good after that, granted, my mother and I weren't speaking because she apparently just caught her second wind and was living it up, while she left me to oversee her demon spawn (little brother). I took to my school work like a good nerd, which didn't last long because the boys were way much better than the ones I had to deal with in the city. The innocence of a child is a thing to behold when you are a child yourself. City children and Country children were worlds apart, in the city if you had you had, if you didn't have well tough luck. In the country people shared and children had different varieties of games everyone could play, there wasn't a prison yard mentality I had so gotten used to in the city with the kids.

My mother was always the good little housewife, so basic necessities weren't a problem for us, but what she lacked the most was interest. She never looked to us, well me, with the interest of a mother, with pride that she gave birth to such lovely creatures. I always got a weird smile and pat on the back from her when people asked about my red skin, my all round cuteness and my lack of social skills with the other kids. I said they were nice but some of them were just downright confused about life in general.

I started the new primary school, Indian Walk Government, after we got settled and that didn't begin without a hitch either. I was suppose to start in standard one but the principal said I had to repeat second year because my mother didn't bring any documentation for us when she dramatically left my father. I mean if I didn't have any papers what the fuck was repeating a grade going to do? I was outraged but then again no one gives a shit about the opinion of a seven year old midget. What sent my anger to new heights was when I was introduced to my new classmates and teacher. In the city my class had close to 40 kids and the kindest teachers ever, in the country bumpkin school I was forced to go to there was a total of 11 children in that class, including me, they were all 'unique' and the teacher was clinically INSANE. She would write on the board, ask if we got it and then erase it when she clearly knew we didn't get it. She also slept most of the time, like her night life as a villain was catching up with her. What amazed me was how comfortable she always made herself at the desk.

Certain kids stuck to me that day because of their weird quirks, ANITA - her two front teeth were so far apart in was hella distracting when conversing, JUDE - everyday his father was summoned to the school because he always wrote straight across the copy book pages, -KYLE - palest dude I had ever met and had hair like a girl, all curly and long, the prison bitch in me wanted to do terrible things to him, one day I snapped and actually drew blood. That sounds bad I just pinched him too hard. DIANA - geez, chick made you want to jump of a building just to stop hearing her talk, OTIS - he was my second friend I made there and was like my voice of reason. At one point he was also my safe space when my mother was having one of her episodes, I would hide out at his house and his mother didn't even bat an eye when she saw us in the gallery drawing Pokemon at 7 at night. He was kind and gentle and to me was going to break some hearts when he got older. I thought shit like that. And then there was STEVE. For some reason I didn't take to him at all when we first met, mostly because the first thing out of my mouth was "Lord yuh head huge." He was like the opposite of me, where I was extreme he was mild, where I was loud he was quiet and where I lacked in school work he made up for it and there is where I figured out why I hated his guts. In my old primary school work wasn't a challenge because there wasn't any challengers, but in the country school I was struggling to retain third place and that was killing me. So in bully like fashion, our days were filled with insults and rough housing. Over time I grew to love that school, there was a certain level of freedom I wasn't allowed to experience before so I dove head first into it. Every day I looked forward to where my recesses and lunch times would take me. Second year provided me the time to people watch and suss out who was going to be my new friends and who my enemies, standard one I had a boyfriend who loved himself more than everyone else in the world because he had money, looked like a laughing Pinocchio all the time. That's probably why I liked him.

At one point I realized he was an idiot of epic proportions when I convinced him that I would like him even more if he got up and peed through the window while class is going on. He did but lets just say that interest fizzled out fast. Standard two was more mild per se. I had a friend who I thought was my best friend but what is friendship when you are spineless. We did everything together, told each other all our secrets, well not all I didn't exactly tell her how horrible my family was and where those marks on my skin came from. She knew I was a tomboy so I can see in her eyes she thought I got them from fighting with my brothers so I left it at that. My standard three journey didn't last long because the school was finally deemed as unsafe so everyone was relocated to other nearby primary schools. Our parting was filled with reminiscing and hugs because no one knew where they were going to end up. I didn't mind, I had gotten used to being uprooted, what got to me though was saying bye to someone who lived down the street to me. It took a complete stranger to point out to me a little later was that I liked him, I was a little offended at first because being the girl that I was, I was brainwashed by Disney into thinking that love at first sight was something that applied in real life. With the lingering stare, halo lighting and fast beating heart being the indicator that love is blooming here. So I only acknowledged it when we were to be separated, he could have been my 2nd future husband.

The only two schools that were available to receive us was an Anglican school far away and a Baptiste school close by. Being as I'm not the type of person to have a normal fucking life, my mother decided that sending me to a school far away was the best thing for my sleep pattern and sanity in getting home after school. So I began Standard three as a student of Fifth Company Anglican Primary School. It was hard, when I say hard I mean just sitting and asking yourself 'why do humans exist' hard.

But like a good little soldier, I trekked on through. Confronted my bullies, licked my wounds, fucked with some kids heads, made friends with the librarian and found my new crush. There he was, sitting in a class for the standard five kids separated from my class by a black board and a very annoying teacher. I don't think I learned anything in the three weeks I was there after the move, he was a very good distraction for me because the kids there were miles different from the ones at Indian Walk. The two memories I have of that place that has stuck with me for years is of first getting basically threatened into teaching the ABC's to a girl who got held back 3 times in that class. It was pure torture, the teacher made me do it only because I was new and she was a vindictive bitch but the girl was even worse. She had the attention span of a politician and a sister who made police 'shake downs' look tame. She made her mission to mess with me when I basically called her sister a waste of sperm. I know, not a good look but you have to understand I was young and I thought that my time could have been in more use playing hopscotch or rounders or just following my beautiful 3rd future husband around. So I gave her what she wanted, my ass on a platter to kick. I took my beating like a 10 year old girl and kept on walking, all the way home to get more licks because I dirtied my school uniform. Things were quiet after that, people avoided me, teachers were concerned I would bring my 'criminal father' to burn the place down or something, some bullshit my grandmother kept going around saying.

The second thing that place has stained my soul with was an act that no one should be forgiven for. There was a boy who was already marked as one of those who had a destiny, to be locked up before 25. Menace was too kind a word for that creature, he loved messing with people physically as much as I liked messing with people emotionally and like the beacon of misfortune I am, he zeroed in on me and I didn't even know it. The school's feeding program is something that is lacking in this country on many fronts, especially how anyone has access to the food and can do many things to it before it is consumed. At the time they placed the lunches on the children's desk instead of letting them line up and receive it themselves so are times kids play pranks on one another but this slime ball took it to another level. I had gotten up to go to the washroom and when I came back everyone was quiet and just milling about. I should have taken that as an indicator that something was afoot but I chose to ignore it because things was so quiet lately and it made me relaxed. So three bites into my sandwich he appears in from of me and sits on my desk, I leaned away since he always smelled like dried spit and that seemed to make him even more giddy.
"You know, I spit in that."
That one statement made me vomit for hours, the teachers did nothing when I told them, their solution was to send my hysterical ass home. I didn't eat anything that wasn't made in front of me for weeks, that meant I didn't eat anything until I got home on evenings at five. It got so bad that I was to the point of becoming anorexic. I can't remember how I broke the habit but somehow I did. Good news is that I'm pretty sure he was in juvie when I graduated standard 5. Probably dead by now.

CHAPTER FOUR

All in all the ride to the country wasn't all for naught. I enjoyed the scenery even though my seat was basically, skin, bone and evil. Even when I was younger I processed things differently that others. My brothers were freaking out by then but I was as calm as a cucumber. Being hysterical never brought anything good to my table so then it made no sense to me. I don't think that to this day I have given myself time to freak out. Well, on the ride down my mother decided that she wanted to visit her father, this was our first taste of country dwelling, and it was a doozy I tell yah! The house was like three wooden jail cells stuck together, smelled like piss, old age and death, and the our grandfather was a man to behold. He had elephantiasis in his legs. "Elephantiasis refers to a parasitic infection that causes extreme swelling in the arms and legs. The disease is caused by the filarial worm, which is transmitted form human to human via the female mosquito when it takes a blood meal."

So that solved the origin of the urine smell. But they were lovely people, who believed any and everything can be solved with food and prayer. They made things there bearable. Coincidentally enough there was where we all ever petted a cat. Our father wasn't big on having'creatures' in the house, or around it. Our lives weren't built in a way where we had the chance in encountering a stray and petting or feeding it, we were carted to and from school, no dilly dallying for us. Anyway, after that we were dropped at the steps of our grandmother's. Carefully we made our way inside, clinging to each other because it seemed as if the entire village was packed inside that little box house, staring at the fresh meat. Not one of them said good night or smiled to make us feel at ease, they just went straight into making us feel like interlopers. While all that was going on the house our dutiful mother was outside yelling and screaming things like "I'm free, lord ah free!" and kissing the dirt ground. I can tell you that shit didn't last long though. Our life there consisted of sleeping on the floor with one chair cushion, no sheet to cover ourselves, being woken up at 4 in the morning to full the water barrels and bottles while everyone else slept, being fed food that can be described as 'natural disaster emergency rations' and not being able to go to school. I can't exactly tell you what my mother's plan was seeing as she didn't take any of our things, we were living like scavengers and oddly enough our relatives took pride in that. It was as if suffering us seemed to quell their anger and jealousy toward out father a little. My father once told me that he was going to just forget about us because we left with her, of course that's bullshit because WTF?! Our primary school teacher at the time at Febeau convinced him that the children shouldn't have to suffer over a squabble between parents so he came for us. Lesson number four was learnt that day: PRIDE IS FOREVER WHILE TRUST IS FLEETING. He came for us alright only to take my older two brothers and leave my younger brother  and I with a solid Screw You! Do you remember back in the 90's how in the Simpson's whenever they introduced the Jesus character he always had a back light? Yup, that was how we saw our father that day, like his appearance would solve everything.

We were enrolled in a nearby primary school because having four children doing nothing all day at home started to look bad and those people were all about appearances. Indian Walk Government Primary, the school that can give anyone a time trip. It was fully board and the classes were separated by the black boards.The school was a slower pace than what I was used to though so fitting in was a breeze, what tripped me up though was my second enemy/frienemy/crush/first love. He beat me at everything in class, that pissed me off to no end but gradually he started to grow on me. I never pursued him even though that class of kids stuck with each other for seven more years of our lives, I always knew in the back of my mind that I was leaving that place so no attachments. Yea I was military that way. When our father came, his face betrayed him for a minute when he saw the kind of pressure we were under but the minute he saw our mother that spite was back. The vipers didn't say a word in the background, when they had the most to say about my father. They reminded me of the sneaky girls in school who whispered behind your back but smiled in you face.

I can't remember exactly what he said to me when I was bawling my eyes out for him to take me with him, what I do remember though, and what would probably stick with me forever more is his last statement, "You have to stay with you mother because you are a girl." That one sentence dried up my tears faster than the Sahara sun. It was like they were gong that struck the bell, the wiper that made everything else clear to see, the fortune in the fortune cookie that gives you the willies. I was dumbstruck, made to stand still as he picked up what little my brothers had and began his trek to get them a taxi. My little brother was going on four so he didn't really understand what was going on, he was still attached to my mother boobs so he wasn't going anywhere away from those so I was truly alone. Nine year old me knew it the minute he walked off, it was every man for themselves.

CHAPTER THREE

When I woke up that morning, breakfast was on my mind. As it was every day I got off the bed because my mother had a knack for making the whole house smell like whatever she was cooking. That dreadful morning was no different, I could smell the bake she made on the baking stone, the eggs she scrambled and the sweet sweet cocoa tea she always made just right. In all my food haze I didn’t hear the arguing at first, the ridiculous cursing hit me when I stepped off the last step and appeared in the kitchen. First thing I noticed was that the television was on an obscenely high level. The noise was drowning and like a symphony of my coming doom and gloom. My brothers were just walking aimlessly around the house, my mother’s voice was getting at an insanely high pitch which only happens when she passes angry and skips right straight to pissed. I knew that angry wail because I was on the end of that wail so many times my heart always picked up pace to help with my fight or flight response in getting out of dodge or what ever instrument she was going to use to beat us senseless with for whatever stupid thing we did.

But this time it wasn’t us she was cursing and wailing at, it was my father who was looking at her with such contempt out of his good eye. Years before when my brothers and I were just dreams in his balls sack he got shot right above his right eye over some money some thieves was trying to take from him during a card game, leaving him with a Mexican drug lord face since he spends all day in the sun for his job. What kicked my heart rate up a notch was that he actually started to yell back at her. At the time that was the scariest thing I had ever seen or heard. My father never raised his voice, he was the epitome of calm, even when he caught us using our baby brother’s baby powder to skate on the ground or when we lit old newspapers on fire and threw it over by the neighbors just for shits and giggles. My brother’s and I couldn’t move as we stared at the two people we love the most in the world call each other names. The rest was a blur, all I remember is my mother taking a hold of my arm and tugging me all over the house as she changed me and my brother and threw clothes in bags at the same time. Ever the multi-tasker. When I finally came out of my shock we were sitting in front of the house, about nine bags of clothes around us and our father on the second floor looking down on us. The later and later it got the more agitated I got so I hopped up to go back inside and then the death grip was back on my arm.
‘Sit down here, I tell you to get up from dey!" she yelled at me.
That’s when I decided to stop waiting for her to come to her senses and let us go back inside and began to finally act like a child. I began to cry my eyes out. Utter waste of time because she didn’t bat an eye. About an hour passed again and I could have seen my brothers resolve in obeying our mother waning and they were getting ready to bolt when a car pulled up. They probably would have made it too.

As a child your imagination is something that could often run away with you and when you get older and you bring up the memory again you realize you must have been scared to death to have thought up something like that. What I am referring to in this situation is my grandmother. When the car pulled up in front of us, she was the one who unfolded herself from the passenger seat but what I saw was no elderly woman, I literally saw the bloody grim reaper. Trick of the light I said, it was getting dark was my excuse, I was hungry, I have used each excuse to rationalize what I saw. The black cloak, scythe and the rumbling in her chest when she spoke, "I have come for you."

I’m just playing, she didn’t say that, I can’t tell you what she said because I had a mini black out when she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the front seat with her and placed me on her lap. When I came to we were flying down the highway, my mother in the back still huffing and puffing and I’m leaning on the sharpest breast I have ever felt.

CHAPTER TWO

First year was calm for me after that, the bullying became a distant dream. So the terms passed in a blur with me striving and succeeding every time in coming first in my class. I literally lived for school work. What I didn’t know at the time was that showing so much enthusiasm for school was considered ‘not cool’. As I look back on it now I realize that my obsession with coming first all the time hindered me from making new friends, learning the lunch time games or destroying one object on school property. For me at the end of every term my teacher at that time usually held a class celebration of some sought and with me being so uncool and always misinformed on such things I thought that the end of my first year class party was a dress up sought of thing and waltzed into class in full six year old party gear. Bubble gum lip gloss, hair clips of every shape and color, jeans jumper, my cleanest sneaker and a friggin fluorescent pink jersey. I was so embarrassed I didn’t make eye contact with anyone for the entire day. What made it even more worse was that the teacher thought it a good idea to hand out gifts for doing such good work. When everyone was getting one gift and a peck on the cheek I got five plus a book about dinosaurs. I was the class nerd and teacher’s pet and didn’t even know it until then.

Kids avoided me the first few days at the start of second year term. Nerds and the teacher’s pets were categorized as snitches back in the day so no one wanted to hang around the girl who would probably run screaming to the teacher if they decided to pull a prank or steal something from the stock room, which I wouldn’t have done if they had tried to get to know me better.

 So I was left alone to my own devices. Sitting in class practicing my penmanship or hanging out in the computer lab room playing tetris. Until I saw him one afternoon. Can’t remember his name now so let’s call him Melvin. Melvin was weird. Calling him creepy is too much so let’s go with weird. When you take time and look back on your school days you would see that you had that one kid in your class you only noticed for the first time when you had nothing else to do, nothing on your mind, no one in class and that person made a noise. When I first saw him he was sitting, hunched over his desk, turning something in his hand and mumbling to himself. I was immediately intrigued. The other kids had nothing about them that merited me being interested in hearing what they had to say ergo my friend dilemma, but this boy who apparently I went to pre-school with, just appeared before me and I couldn’t seem to stop staring. At first it was just an unstable sought of interest I had in him, things like, did he speak, did he eat, what was it he kept twirling and mumbling in his hand and why didn’t he leave his desk until home time? All those questions had kept twirling around my head while I had kept stealing glances at him in the corner back of the classroom during class time. So after about a week I decided it was time to take action. First I bribed the kid who usually sat next to him for his seat. That was hardest pack of marbles I ever had to give away, I felt like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings. 

The irony is though I never played marble pitch, I had just liked to cheat the other kids out of them and keep them at home like trophies. Anyway, after I took the seat it wasn’t enough though, even if I made him cry the need to hear his voice was over whelming so I started having one-sided conversations with him. With years of experience in talking to myself I knew he was no match for me so within a day he cracked and said, "Shut up, shut up, shut up," and went back to hunching over and staring at his desk. Triumphant and ecstatic are the words I will use to describe how I felt that day, something to cross off the book I had on him while observing.

Gradually I pulled him out of his bullet proof shell. Three words turned into sentences after a term and just as easily he turned into my friend other than a test subject and in our second term he magically became my boyfriend. You all must be saying "WTF!" by now because you want to know what a seven year old girl is doing with a boyfriend. Absolutely nothing. You all are thinking about the grown up definition of a boyfriend. A kid’s definition of a boyfriend in 1999 was a boy who would follow you all over the school at lunchtime, buy you snacks, fight through the mob to get you a box lunch with a big piece of chicken and climb the old woman’s plumb tree next to the school when she and her pit bull are out of sight. We were inseparable. But like all good things, it must come to an end. Ours came when I woke up one morning after finally getting my own room but I couldn’t sleep in it because I kept seeing shadows moving every time I took off the light, so I snuck into my parent’s room and proceeded to take over the bed. My mother decided my father was an idiot somewhere between that time and when she woke up and moved us to the country. This is where things get a little more exciting. 

That was sarcasm by the way.

CHAPTER ONE

When you were four years old, what did you dream about? Me, I dreamt I could fly all the time. Typical, who hasn’t dreamt about flying in all their time on this earth? But have your dreams ever ended with you fighting crime with one super hero or another, night after night? For days I would wake up in the morning thinking I was going crazy because any four year old girl who has vivid dreams about beating The Batman’s Joker silly or snapping Sesame Street’s The Counts neck like a twig has to be two banana’s short of a fruit basket, right? Wrong, I was one more dream away from suggesting to my father that I might need therapy only to realise my brothers were enjoying late night cartoons on our room’s television while I slept. Back then we were like gremlins to our father so the entire second floor of our house was practically our bedroom/cage, mainly because anything electrical in the house we made our mission to take apart just for the fun of it, until he brought home an old television and told us if we fixed it we can keep it in our room. Challenge accepted. To this day I honestly cannot say what we did but a month later after a lot of electrical shocks and scotch tape we got it to show, hence the addiction my brothers developed for late nigh cartoons. 1997 in Trinidad and Tobago was the golden year for kids and cartoons. But in my house, local television was even more epic.
My parents were the go with flow kind of parents, you could basically do what you wanted once it wasn’t illegal or affected them in any way. My choices were limited because I am the only girl so I stuck to things like reading, going on scavenger hunts for my dolls (which my brothers hid or buried), watching a shit load of television, talking to myself and finding eventative ways to get my brothers in trouble. Half of the time I did it by snitching, being the only girl in a house full of three boys and my father’s favourite made my snitching tolerable. My brothers didn’t catch on to my mind games until.... hell I don’t think they know I still snitch on them to this day. But this is when I was at home, in the sanctuary of my den; pre-school was another story all together. Being two years younger than my second brother, Merven and three years younger than my older brother Mevin Jr, I attended pre-school on my own. My youngest brother Merve was only a year old so I had to fend for myself in the sea of sugar induced selfish idiots that populated my classroom. Temper tantrums, glue eating, crying, self inflicted injuries that resulted in more crying, no supervision whatsoever, teachers singling out kids and my most favourite nap time.
I, Merlene Dunbar, can proudly say that I hated pre-school with a passion. At that age such thoughts shouldn’t have even passed through my head, but it did. I used to beg my mother to find some way to help me skip straight to first year or be done with school altogether, but it didn’t happen though so I endured it to the bitter end, not making any friends, avoiding that one kid who always tried to burn things with a magnifying glass. Can’t remember when I finished though but I do remember when I started first year at the Febeau Government Primary School in the year 1998.

(taken in 2007)

Located right in the area where I lived, not much concern was given into people’s children safety since the school had no security and no fencing. In the front entrance there was a brick wall but on the other four corners to seal in the school there was nothing.  Just dirt, a tree on each side of the school building, a tiny box meant for the security guard and a little parlour on the other side of the school where some old guy usually sold just snacks and really bad preservatives. Lunchtime was war at his shop seeing as he was our only source of junk food on the compound. After a week I developed a system where I slid under kids legs because I was so short and then used whoever was in front to launch me onto the counter.
Not only that, I was red skinned, so much so that it immediately made me a target for the bigger girls. And when I say bigger girls I don’t mean in a higher standard, I mean these chicks were the same age as me which was around five or six years old, in the same class which was first year yet they looked like their parents gave them steroids to take everyday with their morning tea.

(this is what they looked like to me)

All six of them just gravitated towards each other that first day and formed a pack. My brothers were of no help when the giants (the girls) started following me around the one building on the compound that housed every facility in the school, calling me names. My brothers literally used to go in the other direction whenever they saw me verbally sparring with the giants in the schools court yard. Until one day they went too far and put a dead rat in my new book bag. That bag was the first official school object I had ever gotten that wasn’t a hand me down, and they desecrated it. Sitting at my seat in that hot dusty classroom staring blankly at the dead rat tucked nicely between the pages of my already worn down mathematics textbook, something with in me snapped, my mind just started whirling with violent ideas for me to get my revenge. Scenario after scenario, where I pushed each one of them into a bubbling volcano as they screamed “I’m sorry,” in their decent into the pits of hell where rats chased them forever and ever. But, it wasn’t meant to be because another more reasonable plan came to me when my brother walked past my classroom window. The plan was so deliciously evil I started chuckling like The Brain from Pinky and the Brain when he cooks up a really evil but half thought out plan.

First I waited until the giants commandeered the court yard to play hop-scotch at lunch time. They did that like everyday yet no one challenged them, so that was my chance. My plan was to use the one thing little kids always had a hard time coping with in any facility in which they are surrounded by their peers, humiliation. I wanted to humiliate them to the point where I saw tears on someone’s face and the appearance of a stutter when their parents came to pick them up after school so that I could have felt better. My first target was, let’s call her Keisha because I never tried to learn their names. She was the leader, dark skinned, strong, had the shiniest forehead in the world and had a major crush on my brother Merven. Girls gravitated towards him and for the life of me I couldn’t understand why. But what they didn’t know was that he was a huge mama’s boy and lost his mind whenever someone touched his stuff. Ergo his power rangers pencil case our mother had bought him after he had one of his melt downs in the store, he loved that thing more than me so when he went running all over the school like primary school boys loved to do, I lifted it from his bag. Part one of the mission completed. Next I had to find some way to get it into Keisha’s hands the exact same moment my brother realised someone was in his bag, which I left sufficient evidence of seeing his stationary was all over the floor. Muahahahaha.....
Anyway, accosting Keisha during their hop scotch game was easy. Getting her to get angry and try something on me was the hard part. She might have been a bully but she was a professional one at that, she tortured without leaving physical evidence. The pencil case was my main mission in getting it into her muscular man hands but when I saw her jumping up and down on the court yard, reflecting light to out of space on her forehead the rage resurfaced and I went way off script. I took a swig of liquid courage (a dollar juice) and stomped off into the yard. When I reached face to face with her, I pushed her. Didn’t really do much considering I was the one who stumbled but that got her attention.
“Gyul, you crazy ah what!” she yelled.
At that point I realised I fucked up because in my revenge plan, getting the living tar beaten out of me if things didn’t work out was skimmed over in my rage. So seeing her nostrils flare was a clear sign I was about to die by size ten shoes to the chest in which caved in my ribs in turn puncturing my heart, an unseen force caused me to propelled the pencil case I had in my hand toward her, which she caught because duh... it was empty. The entire court yard erupted into laughter at my feeble attempt at survival, causing Keisha to prance around with the case waving it in my face when the sight of my very pissed off brother launched her across the court yard with a solid push came as a surprise. So was him jumping on top of her and grappling for the pencil case that for some reason she didn’t want to let go of. I just stood there fascinated with the events because one; my brother was stocky and strong for his age yet Keisha held on to the pencil case like a pit bull with a piece of steak meat and two; the fear of getting a concussion from getting slapped with Keisha's gorilla hands had locked up my knees. Results of the fight were inconclusive seeing as the school’s ninja security guard I had never laid eyes on before came and separated them. Through the process of the teachers and parents holing up in the office of the principal all evening not once was my name called also the giants never harassed me after that. They kind of just disbanded after witnessing the awesome powers of my unstable brother whom they thought I was going to sick on them. Keisha though turned into a lunch time stalker, where my brother went she went. It made my brother crazier for a while until my father had to come in school and have a chat with the principal about it. My school life was bully free for a while.