Tales from the Projects: The Very First Time I Was Ever Punched in the Face

When I was 5 years old, I lived in the projects outside of a reservation in South Dakota. I was playing in the jungle gym when this horrible 9-year-old boy and his cronies chased me off and told me that girls weren't allowed to play there.

I have some sweet gossip about this kid, readers. He was the illegitimate child of an American Indian guy from the nearby reservation which doesn't really have anything to do with this story, but I think it might explain the mean thing he's about to do. He probably had abandonment issues and didn't know where he belonged...like Hercules. Although Hercules never punched a little girl. Just saying.

I ran away, feeling guilty about violating the rules. By the time I got back to my house I realized that he obviously didn't have the right to tell me where I could and could not play. I concluded that the brave thing to do, the right thing to do, the thing Captain Janeway would do, would be to march back to those boys and give an impassioned speech.

Feminism!

So I did that.

And he punched me in the face.

I came home in hysterics with a black eye. My mom freaked out and put me in the car because she insisted on going straight to the authorities. We drove past that kid's house so that my mom could scream at them out of the window because we're pretty white trash. There's no denying it at this point.

That's right, we had a Geo Metro.

Epilogue: 

I'm not really sure what the Cops can do about a mean 9-year-old to begin with, but I wasn't going to snitch. I thought it was my fault that he punched me because I was the one who came back to the jungle gym/gave a speech. When we got to the Police Station, I just sat there and cried when they tried to ask me questions. Captain Janeway would have been so disappointed in me.