Cinderella

When I was in elementary school, I had to wear brown high-top, lace-up shoes. I hated those shoes and wished I could wear the Mary Jane's that some of the other girls were wearing. In addition, every year before school started, my mother would sit me down and give me a perm. I had stick straight hair and she must have wanted a little girl with beautiful curls. What she got was a little girl with a frizzy head. I hated my hair and wished I had the beautiful curls that some of the other girls had. I wore mostly homemade or hand-me-down clothes. My smiling face in those class pictures looked like someone from the musical "Annie". It was no surprise that I tried to be invisible. I didn't want anyone to look at me. If my teacher called on me to answer a question, I would start to cry. I began to wish I was Cinderella and had a fairy Godmother who could turn me into someone beautiful. Someone with a beautiful new dress and beautiful new shoes and beautiful hair. Somehow I survived those childhood years and as I grew older, I enjoyed designing and sewing my own clothes. I always had a part-time job after school to enable me to buy new shoes whenever I wanted and my hair turned dark and shiny. I turned into my own version of Cinderella and found that I could be happy about myself and the way I looked. Who needs a fairy Godmother anyway??