The Worst Day For Alex

So I decided to go back into my memories since today is rather boring and this is the first day I thought of:

I never fit in well in kindergarten...maybe it was because I didn't talk or because I thought I was a blue fairy. But what ever it was I wasn't very social. So when it was parents week my dad came and talked to my kindergarten class. This was normally the favorite time of little kindergartners everywhere, and it would have been mine too...except for one small thing: my dad came in full Lakota dress. I was made to dress up also...wearing my little moccasins, feather in my hair, and all my jewelry. I remember the dreaded question my father asked "Now who in here knows my daughter?" Every hand pointed to me. For most of my childhood I had night mares about hundreds of little fingers pointing in my direction followed by the most famous question of all "What's that around your neck?...What's in it?" Then the famous answer "Ugh...Mom!"

Although the rest of my elementary years were spent not telling anyone I was Indian and staying out of the sun. I found that no one ever asked unless it was a standardized test. I have sense come to cope with this fear of being thought different and odd because of being Lakota Sioux...so last year I got up the nerve to wear my sisters Jingle Dress into class. There were no fingers at me, nor were there any war chants. But unfortunately I got the question. "What's that around your neck?" followed by its friend: "What's in it?" and then to bring down the years of self therapy: "ugh...really?"

The answers to these questions that could result it that sort of an answer and have always been well...different and odd. It is a beaded turtle around my neck and what is in it is my umbilical cord. It tells everything about me to a person who knows how to look. It says I am an Indian, that I am a girl, my colors, and my religion, not to mention it tells a bit of my name by pointing south and most important it is the bond with my mother. My family was involved in making it: my mother made me. my father sewed it and my aunt beaded it. I am this necklace and more importantly I am different and odd.

I still get that Kindergarten fear, some things don't go away easily, for the rest of my life I will be the little girl with the feather in her hair wanting to cry. But I have come to accept that when all the children pointed at me, they were only being honest I am my father's child and when they asked what was around my neck people only want to know why I am my fathers child.