Truth

“And the other moral is, what you remember happened, becomes what happened.”

-John Green

WARNING: The following may or may not be a work of fiction.

The story of what happened according to my cousin from Nebraska:

“When I was in first grade, I, like so many six year olds before me, played House at recess. My best friend Joanna was the mommy, I was the baby, and Mary was my older sister. The rest of the cast rotated- sometimes Sam was a puppy, sometimes Frances was also a puppy, and sometimes David was a puppy too, and then there were too many puppies for Mommy to handle and she would freak out and leave the puppies and the babies to fend for themselves while she went to Dunkin’ Doughnuts with her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend was a boy named Joseph who transferred into our school when his school was closed in second grade. I don’t remember what his old school was called. He came in with Brianna, Chris, Alex, and another kid named Joseph who went by Joe. And they all settled in pretty nicely.

Except, of course, for Joseph, who decided it would be fun to chase around the group of girls (plus David) who were just minding their own business playing House in the corner of the lot by the bushes. And at first it was kind of fun, it added a new element to our game- sometimes we were being robbed, and sometimes we were the robbers being chased by the police. And for a while, Mary and I didn’t mind.

Then Joanna stopped running.

Then Joanna befriended the robber/ policeman and stopped being our mom. Instead she just walked around the lot talking to Joseph- about what, who knows. You have to understand that I was a very close-minded seven year old who firmly believed that boys should play football at recess- except for David, poor David, who’s only friend was Frances, who shared her Pokémon cards with him. But anyway, I did not approve of Joseph and Joanna. I talked to Mary and she didn’t like it either. The puppies didn’t care.

In third grade Mary moved away, Sam, Frances, and David got into Bakugan, and Joanna made it very clear she had outgrown House, and me. When Joseph moved away she struck up a friendship with a couple mean girls who learned sign language to talk to each other in class. And so I was lonely for the rest of elementary school, The End.”

The story of what happened according to Joanna, probably, I don’t know, I’ve never met her:

“When I was in first grade, I was the mom who always took her daughters who Chicken Fingers and Mashed Potato Land during recess. When they got the dogs, they always wanted to get a dogsitter even though we were just leaving for a day in House time, and like eight minutes real time, tops. And I don’t know, I guess I just started to outgrow it.

Sandy and Liz supported me being with Joseph- they thought we made a cute couple. But it wasn’t like that. He was my friend.

I promised my old friends I’d play with them on the last day of third grade picnic, but when I found out that would be Joseph’s last day I ditched them. They’d been nothing but terrible to me all year, insisting that I still be with them even though I didn’t want to, saying terrible things to my closest friend and pretty much making him my only friend. No way would I go back to that.

When fourth grade started, the gang had pretty much dissolved anyway. Sandy and Liz invited me to sit with them at lunch. They were’nt the best, but anything was better than what I had.”