It was early winter, and I had just gotten a new tank top set. It was white, with blue, green, and red palm trees on it, and the brand was Jet Set. I remember the brand name because I thought it sounded so grown-up and sophisticated. Made me sound like I should be on Falcon Crest or something.

I had decided Jet-Set Karen would make her glamorous debut at school the next day. So the following morning I padded downstairs in the tank top and shorts, ready to knock 'em dead, grade-school style.

"You can't wear that," my mom said.

The walls began to close in on me. I couldn't breathe. I even began to stutter a little.

"B-b-but I want to wear it today."

Foolish me! As if desire had anything to do with it. At eight, you see, I still thought I could bend the world to my will—that if I wanted it badly enough, the mere act of wearing shorts could turn the tide of the seasons backward. Cruel lessons to learn.

As I should have expected, my mother stuck to her guns. "Well, you can't wear it, sweetie. It's winter. You can wear it when it gets warm again, okay?" She gave me a sympathetic look and continued making breakfast.

I stuck out my lower lip and produced the most pathetic pout of my career. I readied myself to turn on the water works, if needed. "But I really want to," I said quietly, and, clasping my hands together serenely, did an impression of one of those sad-eyed Precious Moments dolls. I had not yet learned that this approach rarely works with mothers. And it didn't work this time.

"Sorry, hon."

That was it, then.

Faced with the prospect of such crushing disappointment, strategy went out the window. I threw a monumental tantrum. I cried and I stomped, and through it all I chanted "it's not fair," faster and faster until I sounded like a Hare Krishna on meth.

It was not pretty.

And then something alarming happened.

"Fine," she said.

There was a thick silence, during which I tried to process what had happened. When you're a kid throwing a tantrum, and you finally get what you want, there's always that moment when you wonder if whatever it is is really worth the price you are paying for it. Hearing my mother say that one word—with so much tension in her voice—reminded me of the green, still sky, just before a tornado. It was scary.

I just stood there. "Oh," I said. And I knew something was horribly wrong. But then I looked down at the blue, green, and red palm trees on my shorts, and knew I couldn't give up the chance to show off the new Falcon Crest version of myself. So out I went.

The moment I stepped outside, of course, I was sorry for it all. Sorry for the tantrum, sorry for what I had said to my mother—but most of all, sorry that I had insisted on going outside in a tank top and shorts in November. But if I was anything, I was stubborn, and so I clutched my lunch box tightly and began the three-block trek to school. This is probably a good point to mention that while I was young, my parents spent a lot of time reading books with names like, "The Strong-Willed Child," in hopes of getting some insight into my behavior. Not sure they helped much.

Somehow I made it to school, although I must have been nothing but a little Karen-sicle by the time I got there. Things were great, and I got lots of comments on my snazzy outfit. Some of these were comments expressing puzzlement—asking me if I realized what month it was—but I didn't let this bother me. After all, the matriarch on Falcon Crest didn't care if everyone liked her, right? I was the center of attention, and I was living it up. At least, until recess.

Our elementary school had a pretty big playground, and one section of it had about five or six enormous tractor tires for the kids to play on. They were great for hide and seek, since you could almost stand up in one without being seen. This particular recess, however, I had to crawl inside one of them to get shelter from the Arctic winds. It was miserable. I kept having flashbacks to Hans Christian Andersen's story of the Little Match Girl (what kind of a children's story is this, anyway?), who froze to death with her hand over her box of matches. And for the second time that day, I learned my lesson. The Little Match Girl had no home to go to, and no warm clothes to wear. I had both of those things. If I froze to death, it would be because of my own stupidity.

When I was older, it occurred to me that none of this could have transpired without my teacher's consent. No self-respecting teacher would have allowed a barely clad child to be outside when the weather was so cold, unless she had explicit instructions from the child's mother. My mother and teacher were obviously in a conspiracy to break my stubborn will.

To this day, my mother swears none of this ever happened. "I would never send you out in the cold dressed like that," she says, feigning horror. And then she changes the subject—a little too quickly. Of course, it's possible that I've exaggerated the incident. It's possible that over many years this story has accrued layer upon layer of hyperbole, until it finally transformed itself into the monstrous tale that I tell you today. Such a thing is possible.

But this is the way I remember it happening. And that's what matters.

Something changed partway through third grade. It became acceptable, even desirable, to hang around with boys. Not that I hadn't always had crushes. In first grade I tried to kiss a boy named Robbie, who cruelly rebuffed my advances (he ran away). In second grade, I was inexplicably fascinated by a boy named Tom, who talked in a raspy voice and beat all the other kids at kickball. But in third grade there was Zach. Little, sarcastic Zach, with his freckles and his sandy-blond hair. I had never seen his kind of attitude before, and was fascinated by it. Needless to say, this would not be the last time I dated a smart-ass.

Zach and I shared a passion for baseball cards. This was back when I watched baseball regularly, back when movies like The Natural and Tigertown were the epitome of cool for me. More than anything, I wanted to be a baseball star and make a triumphant slow-motion run around the bases with the lights flickering and shooting out sparks over my head. This scene, which I played over and over in my head, would be my all-consuming sports fantasy (at least until I saw Chariots of Fire and decided to become an Olympic runner). Somewhere through the years my interest in baseball waned, probably because I realized that girls weren't allowed to play major league ball. But third grade was a purer age, when gender was just another physical characteristic—like having red hair—and didn't make or break your dreams.

So I collected cards and brought them in to trade with Zach, who sat in front of me in class. Zach only collected cards that were in "mint" condition, and he showed me how an unsatisfactory card could be pressed flat inside a heavy book. This was a kind of alchemy he'd learned from his big brother, and allegedly, it transformed a creased card into a mint one. Of course, we'd had the wool pulled over our eyes a bit on this point. But it didn't really matter. As long as we thought the cards were worth something, we were having fun.

When we weren't talking baseball stats, Zach and I were talking about our favorite television show, The Dukes of Hazzard. Zach was going to buy the General Lee, and I was going to get a Jeep, and we would drive around all day running ramps and laughing while Cooter tried to catch us. It would be a blast. And so we hashed out our plans every day before school started, with him turned around in his chair and leaning on my desk. Sometimes we sang the opening song, until the other kids told us to shut up:

"Making their way the only way they know how, That's just a little bit more than the law would allow."

I'm not sure when this buddy situation turned into him being my boyfriend. This was before girls and boys parsed each other's words like miniature linguists, examining each phrase under a variety of lights and conditions, trying to divine the truth hidden within. There was no strategizing in third grade, no self-consciousness, no sweaty palms leading up to an agonizing question that meant the difference between life and death. It probably happened some lazy afternoon while cutting construction paper in art class. We were probably passing the glue back and forth, and simply decided to become boyfriend and girlfriend, the same way we decided to eat the lasagna on our lunch tray rather than the creamed corn.

I remember some of the girls looking at us with envy. Zach was pretty cute, after all. But honestly, how could they compete? I had it all: the brains, the understated good looks, the magic bracelets that were actually rubber bands. Most importantly, Zach and I actually had stuff to talk about. I figured the other girls—with their Barbie dolls and their EZ Bake ovens—could just eat their hearts out.

Our relationship didn't change much after he became my boyfriend. We still talked about baseball and Mama's Family and the antics of Bo and Luke Duke. I do remember once though, on a class outing to the roller rink, when Zach and I held hands. We were stumbling around the rink together, doing our best to avoid the obnoxious older kids, who were always skating backwards or squatting down with one long leg jutting out in front like crumpled storks—practicing for the limbo competition. When we played the four corners game, Zach and I went to the same corner until we were both ousted by more experienced players. And when it was time for the couples skate, we wobbled around together some more, giggling and making fun of the other couples for as long as the song lasted. In third grade, this was true love.

I wrote about Zach in my diary, which meant he was at least as important to me as The Goonies and Star Wars, my other favorite topics. But that summer when my family moved, I never quite got around to telling him.

Sorry, Zach, wherever you are. We'll always have third grade.

Kevin was one of the meaner kids in class. He had a wicked smile, and a passion for disrupting class with simulated fart sounds. Usually, Kevin picked on the smaller kids, but one time he embarrassed me terribly by holding an anatomy book in front of my face and pointing to a diagram of the breasts. I was mortified, but I do remember looking at the strange way the tissues seemed to be folded around inside the breast, and thinking how odd that was, and how I wasn't sure I wanted any of that stuff anyway.

One day, Kevin brought a bike chain to school with him. It was fairly long, with large metal links. He wound it around his knuckles, waving a menacing fist at the group of boys gathered around him. Before long, he began to show off even more. He waved the chain around, and had the other boys tug on it to prove how strong it was. And then, in a Houdinic fervor, Kevin chained himself to his desk.

Kevin looked at the class and grinned widely—for about ten seconds. That is, until he found himself unable to undo the hefty combination lock on the chain. At first, there was a little laugh of disbelief, as he tried the numbers on the lock over and over again. Nothing. He tried the numbers in a different sequence. Still nothing. Finally, he tried to shimmy out of the chain—making these horrible grunting sounds as he did so—but only succeeded in jerking the desk all around. Kevin and the desk were fused together, like some sort of hybrid creature from Norse mythology.

We were all alarmed at this turn of events, but not so alarmed that we couldn't laugh. Just a little.

That was when Mr. G, the principal, came in.

A hush fell over the class, and I had the distinct impression that all the air had been sucked out of the room. Contrary to the spelling mnemonic taught to children everywhere, Mr. G was most certainly not our pal. He was a strict, ex-military man who didn't tolerate much in the way of misbehavior, and operated under the Machiavellian assumption that it was better—far better—to be feared than loved. The only time I'd ever seen him smile was in his yearbook picture, and even that, I suspected, may have been touched up after the fact.

Kevin's eyes were wide with terror.

Mr. G didn't hesitate. He assessed the situation, then picked Kevin up, desk and all, and carried him out into the hallway. No one said a word. Kevin found his voice then, and began to shriek. "Noooooooo! Noooooooo!" We were all listening as Kevin's panicked voice traveled down the infinitely long hallway, his screams finally growing fainter until at last we could not hear him at all. As Mrs. H chastised us and re-initiated our reading lessons, we were left wondering if the one-time bully would ever return to us.

An hour later, we were doing purple math problems on mimeographed pieces of paper. Kevin walked quietly back into the classroom, pale and silent, eyes rimmed with red as if he had seen things of such horror that he would never be able to describe them. Most unthinkably, it was obvious that Kevin had been crying. His desk was gone, and so was his chain. He was holding his hands over his butt as if the skin there was very, very tender.

Kevin didn't speak the rest of the day, and at recess he was like a small monk huddled up by the monkey bars.

I felt a little sorry for him.

But just a little.

It all started when I had to stay the night at Greg G's house.

Greg's mom and my mom were best friends, so Greg and I were forced to spend a lot of time together. Every Sunday after church, our families would go to the restaurant at the Ramada Inn to eat lunch together. Greg and I were always bored during the meal. We'd sit squishing green jell-o through our teeth until our parents dismissed us, at which point we'd go out to the lobby and monopolize the sit-down Centipede game. Sometimes we'd fight over the controls.

Greg and I had a conditional friendship, the condition being that no one in school could ever know about it. The problem? He was a boy, and I was a girl. Neither of us really believed that the other had cooties, but we had to stand behind the party platform anyway. It was just one of those things.

This arrangement came to an abrupt end, however, when my parents went out of town one weekend. I couldn't go with them because I had school, and Greg's mom was more than happy to put me up for the night. From the time I arrived, Winnie the Pooh sleeping bag tucked under my arm, I was uncomfortable. Greg was embarrassed and irritated, and he kept casting withering glances at me, as if we were two baboons and I had intruded on his territory. After dinner and some cookies, Greg's mom showed me his room—there were cowboy boots and lassos on his sheets—and suggested that he give up the bed and sleep on the couch. But Greg threw a temper tantrum, then became all maudlin and sulky, until I said fine, I'd sleep on the couch because I didn't like the cowboy stuff, anyway. (This was a blatant lie. I've always been fascinated with Western stuff. I had a Billy the Kid outfit that was my prized possession until I rode some spinning carnival ride thing and threw up on it. But whatever. If I'd had cowboy sheets, I probably would have guarded them just as jealously as Greg did).

At this point, I would like to remind everyone that grade school can be tough. Not nearly as tough as middle school, but when you're in grade school there's nothing to compare it with so it's about as bad as it can get. You have to step carefully. The social codes in grade school are really just cartoonish representations of adult society, and the kids often don't have any idea what their own rules mean.

The morning after the sleepover, Greg and I got ready and started walking to school. After a few blocks, it occurred to us that the circumstances might be cause for disapproval and ridicule from our peers. So we agreed that Greg would walk on, and I would wait until he was about a block ahead before continuing. But it was too late for discretion. Lamar R., another boy in our class, saw the two of us walking together just before we split up. There was a brief look of astonishment on his face, followed by an expression of unthinkable glee, and then he ran as fast as he could toward the school. By the time I got into the classroom and hung my jacket on the coat room peg, everyone knew our not-so-dirty secret.

"Karen and Greg spent the night!" they shouted. There was riotous laughter. Kids were standing on their chairs, tossing papers in the air. Apparently, the excitement of a scandal had caused our classmates to lose all sense of decorum.

Greg was sitting quietly at his desk, staring hard at one of those Scholastic information sheets about killer bees, but even from across the room I could see how red his face was. As for me, I loudly denounced the claims, bossily calling Lamar a liar until it became obvious that everyone was determined to believe the more sensational story.

"Karen and Greg spent the night!" they shouted again.

"What does that mean?" one of the girls asked, looking puzzled. I was kind of curious, too. Everyone turned to hear what Lamar would say.

Flushed with joy at all the attention he was receiving, Lamar's face broke into a wide grin that I will never forget. "Hanky panky," he said, and nodded knowingly.