Limited Perspective

Richardson is a whole other world filled with intellect, maturity, and life and lights! The DART stations and the rush of a train! It's all so amazing and fabulous! Three days a week I walk among modern buildings and shining windows coating grand buildings meant for study and note-taking.

Then can you imagine, that I began in a house about seventy years old to the very day right now, where the door hinges and fridge door have begun to creak? Where there are rows of houses just as small with leaking paint and where likely the youngest child got the smallest room where the roof leaked? At least, unlike the rest, this space was all mine.

And I have to say it was a lovely start. My bed was it's own princess tower. I saw everything, I was ruler over all I saw. I had a veritable horde of toys and stuffed animals. My parents-- Mama y Papa-- were very indulgent. I wish I'd been much more grateful, but autism is an elusive, confounding beast. My parents never judged me so harshly. They simply read the signs and got the right people involved.

Then again, they could stand to call my sister by her proper name. You see I have two elder brothers too, still living in this house, but they work and earn the food and space. How wonderful, I could only aspire to be like that.

Now it isn't wholly accurate, turns out the eldest was given the wrong pieces. She'd never been a boy but the dressing and the skin and the parts all contradicted what she had known to be true. And of course, she is still here so there is that. I wasn't wrenched away from my sister, who in her ache and dysphoria had been a bit cold to be honest, for some years.

Though Father still calls her by that name. The "deadname." Which I won't humor even on here, since it. Is. Well, dead.

I grew somewhat self-centered I will admit. I grew up among Spanish speakers, and homely women wearing normal sweats and a bit on the plumper side. I grew up with a Panaderia just past the road.

On that same strip is a gas station, an auto shop, some other food place-- there always is one here in this country-- and a laundromat. Big, automated machines, shiny, new looking washers and dryers. There had been a time where ours malfunctioned so we went there to pay for a wash, for a quarter.

And the rest? Those were given to me, since they had wonderful arcade games on the back wall. To my eyes such games were candy. Absolutely perfect for always moving always animated hands, fidgeting in weird--

Divergent ways.

I say it over and over but that's because it's just as formative as the lower class, predominantly Hispanic and Black low-class speck of Dallas, Tx I grew up in.

A child always in her own head, I suppose a parent would have to hold on a little tighter.

I remember a little red ball. More than any doll or stuffed animal I put to sleep or decorated the living room with to be a little less empty as I watched cartoons with only my own company, the red plastic, in such a vibrant color and softly bopped against my head enchanted my eyes. I rolled it across a nice little lawn on the front porch, kicked and threw to my Mother who played with me. Until it rolled onto the main road that divided each line of houses and spat out onto the street proper left and right. Point is, I would have absolutely walked onto the pavement in the way of a car for that little red ball. Not even notice-- if my mom hadn't held me with a word, firmly in place so she could get my little red ball.

I could wax on, tell each and every little thing that made my neighborhood small and mundane as it was the very best or how I rolled down the main road while learning to ride a bike that now sits collecting rust and spider webs-- again spoiled-- however the challenge read good or bad.

For better or for worse. In ill and in prosperity.

There was school. And like I said, I genuinely believe there was no 'White' kid in that entire three floor unit. Or was it-- no it was two. Oh, there was a White teacher! Quite a nice man and he taught us out of a one-room schoolhouse! I think that's where all the first grade classes are. And they have metal steps girls can sit on to play patty cake.

Everyone there for the most part were Black or brown.

And, did you know that at that age all primary school kids care about is being loud and beepy games. I like those things too sure.

But no one minded the teachers who were trying to teach or did very well with reading. They were all sooooo slow.

And I know it wasn't very polite, the teacher screamed at me to get that point across, it was just so slow.

I decided to stay much more quiet after that.

School became boring waiting for most of the class to catch up.

And frankly kids are not very kind.

They're demons and I never knew what I did wrong! All I did was be nice and smile. My family had liked it, why did no one my age like me?

I hadn't had a friend before school, I didn't count my cousin then. Such a mistake. He may have been hard to understand before he learned to talk though no one else brought me candy when I was sick. Or thought of me in middle school after I had broken an arm to bring me chips and fruit in a pretty basket.

In place of a wider world that shunned me I found solace in the warmth of my family.

I focused on the wonder of yearly easter egg hunts and what flowery, light colored dress I would wear. On the Christmas prayer-- "misa"-- thing at another Aunt's house, where we opened presents at midnight.

My childhood was birthday parties with awful Mexican music blaring from speakers, at least they shut up when it was pinata and cake time. It was random weekend visits to one cousin whose father owned a ranch and so, so many animals. Who had a Netflix account and gush about cartoons we both liked or hammer out what to watch when and for how long.

"Two episodes of yours... finish this... and then the rest for mine."

"Okay."

"Outside time, just for one Demon Game."

"What are we doing out here? The pizza's come!"

My house isn't exactly a den for activity and entertaining two kids with a burgeoning obsession for TV. Either way we made do.

We played games, we scattered toys, and my brother was always smiling and responsive for a scant couple of hours when we took up his console.

Where did all that time go?

I-- never realized how much bigger the world could be.

Now that cousin is five hours away pursuing hospital management. Management! It's-- it's so grown-up! So technical and well-paid, he'd certainly not seemed the type for such a job. However he certainly loved money. And I suppose, he is a bit used to cheating already.

Both my parents are too old to run with me now. My Mom just about in her golden years. I'd never had to think too hard on being conceived at forty. Not since my mother was fifty, and her daughter was still in the fifth grade. Hardly a functional pessimist.

My sister deems me worthy of hearing about politics or about sterilization. We each know a cache of memes to use in place of dry, bland little tidbits about our lives.

I deem her worthy of speaking anime with.

Two days a week, I speak with a thirty-two year old in the Student Union and I have him in my contacts.

Where has the time gone?

I'm a firm libertarian(?) or liberal. I firmly believe social issues must have more of a concentration in politics, and surely beyond the will of old White dudes.

To think, such nuanced and educated sounding notions coming out of my mouth and onto type. I wonder, could you believe? That I'd started in a poor little barrio where we made tamales from masa rather than turkey and rice rather than green beans and mashed potatoes to go with pollo?