Personal Narrative: Growing Up In Elementary School

Growing up was complicated. My hairstyle resembled a coconut. My teeth were abnormally crooked. Honestly, I was a living disaster. At the same time, I was raised by immigrant parents. In other words, my weekends were spent at Vietnamese school and having the most “difficult” name on the attendance list. The area that I lived in wasn’t as terrible as other neighborhoods, but it was lonesome. There were no children around my age, so most of my time was spent around my family. Since my parents are immigrants, their mindset is focused on work. And only work. My dad always told me that if he wasn’t working that we’d lived under the bridge. I was terrified, so after that exchange, I never complained about my parents working for twelve hours a day.

It was horrible. My aunt’s children were barbaric. I don’t know what I did wrong, but they clearly did not like me. They expressed their displeasure with me by pulling strands of my short black hair, leaving me out while they would play Monopoly, and pretending that I didn’t exist. This shaped me into a quiet and extremely conservative person. In elementary school, however, I was peculiarly quiet. And by peculiarly quiet, I mean that I would not dare say a single word during the entire school day. Maybe I was striving to be a mime.

Back in the first grade, I remembered when my teacher, Ms.Ettro, would call on me to answer a math question.

“Theresa, what is the answer to this problem?” she asked.

I shrugged. I knew the answer, but acted as if I didn’t know, so she could move on to the next student. This was my way of communicating to others: shrugging or nodding. On the other hand, my classmates weren’t cruel to me like my cousins. However, all the kids in my class had their little cliques playing House while I was in the corner of the classroom drawing penguins. It just made me heartbroken that nobody would talk to me. But then again, it was my fault. I never made an effort to speak to anybody nor had a say in