When I was a kid I wanted to be Shirley Temple. Or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Blair from the “Facts of Life.” I wanted to be a gymnast or a skater or a dancer or a singer or an actress or twirl batons or something like that. I wanted to be Margaux Kramer. To a 7-year-old me it was no conincidence that the prettiest, most stuck-up, popular chipette Brittany and I shared a name.

I was a totally prissy, princess attention junkie. In a tutu. Dancing for you for as long as you can stand to watch, busting my freshly choreographed moves on you whilst falsettoing Paula Abdul’s “Rush, Rush” into a banana clip.

In my after school care I would write plays, cast them, myself always in the lead, then direct and perform the show. In day care. In first grade I did a revisionist version of Cinderella that had Cinderella (performed flawlessly by me, naturally) doing 80s dance moves such as the Roger Rabbit. I think there was some sub-plot about Cinderella rebelling against the stepmother who made her drink powdered milk. They made us drink powdered milk at day care and I hated it so much, so much. Barf, just thinking of it now makes me stomach wince.

I convinced my mom to let me be a cheerleader for a city league kids’ football team. The Ashland City Cowboys. How janky is that? They had navy and blue uniforms with stars on them and I got some bloomers that had my name embroidered right across the ass. (I fucking loved those bloomers. I would sometimes wear them under my clothes to school. Just because.) We did a dance to freaking Alabama’s “Mountain Music.” You know, like Grandma and Grandpa used to play. Is that not the single most redneck thing you have ever heard?
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