“I’m a dork,” I said to Sophie.
“You’re not a dork,” she said kindly. “You’re just weird.”
“No, today I feel like a dork. Do you ever have one of those days?”
She thought about this. “No. Besides, ‘dork’ is a bad word.”
“Well, it’s a bad word if you call somebody else that.”
She waited for me to get the point.
“Okay,” I said, “I shouldn’t call myself that, but I really feel like a dork. I sent two text messages? And nobody wrote back. I know it was only two, but now I’m sure I have no friends.”
Sophie laughed. “It was just two messages. You have a lot of friends.”
“Nope. No friends. Big dork. Life, over.”
She laughed harder. “That’s NOT true.”
I sighed. “Okay. But it FEELS like it’s true.”
She walked away smiling and shaking her head, relieved that second grade is not the only habitat for drama queens.
Later, in the bathroom, she stared at the mirror, which has lipstick writing on it. “Why is it up to ‘WARRIOR x6′? The last time I was here, it was only ‘WARRIOR x3.’”
“It’s been a very long week, kid.”
“What, like, three more bad things happened?”
“Yup. I survived three more bad rotten lousy things. And I’m still here.”
“Wow,” she said, looking impressed. “Next time I come home it’ll be, like, ‘WARRIOR x34.’”
“Babe,” said I, “we’ll be up to ‘WARRIOR x420.’ Prepare yourself.”
She gazed at me with what I thought was adoration. I swelled with pride.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, patiently.
I live on the Dork-Warrior Continuum.
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