Seeing Stars

A little tale from my childhood

School.

I’m 4 years old.

We call it the “central area”

Smurf the Guinea pig is scampering about. He weaves through the chaos of grazed knees, strewn toys and discarded milk bottles with their chewed blue straws.

Not long after, he’ll get squished in the white concertina partition that divides the classrooms and meet his maker. Not that he knows this. On he goes, squeaking, a merry mini carpet cow…..

Mrs Foster wears her familiar overalls. She’s a dumpy Disney fairy godmother, lavishing praise in the sing-song tones young children are supposed to like.

She tells me I look beautiful in the glittery frock.

“Like a princess!”

“I’m a fairy!”

I correct her. Isn’t this obvious?

It’s the same dress I drag from the dressing up rack, every single day. Some disco diva’s Saturday night party piece, meeting its sparkly end amongst the chubby, sticky hands of infants.

I pose in the mirror, pretending I have long hair, like the other girls.

My Mum says it’s too much trouble.

The same reason I don’t have a middle name…..like the other girls.

I take off the dress and decide I am going to make something quite fabulous.

I head over to the margarine tubs of gloopy, glossy Marvin.

Green glue spreaders that remind me of the legs and webbed feet of ducks.

“You only need a bit”

Toilet rolls and foil.

Yoghurt pots and Cornflake boxes.

“What are you making?”

Asks Claire Gladwell.

“It’s a spaceship!”

I announce.

I tell her about the magic buttons I have fashioned from milk bottle tops, show her the control panels made from polystyrene chip trays.

I explain the levers, functions.

Instantly, she wants it.

“Will you swap it for my Beanie Baby William?”

She says……. and I get that, because after all, my spaceship is SO AMAZING!

I mull this over. I collect ‘Baby Williams’. They come in little matchboxes. Sometimes I pretend they are the children of my Sindy.

“Yes, okay”

We both beam. It’s like ‘Swap Shop’ without Noel Edmonds.

Hometime comes.

I go get my new Baby William and Claire picks up the spaceship I made. We’re both so thrilled.

But the teachers say ‘no’, we’re not allowed to.

Because my spaceship is ‘junk’.

How could it possibly be worth the same as a ‘real’ toy?

One from a shop.

Apparently, Claire’s mum wouldn’t like it if she came to school with a Baby William and went home with ‘some rubbish’.

I don’t understand. Claire liked my spaceship and I’d been proud of it.

The adults get their way.

Claire Gladwell takes home Baby William

And I, my model.

“I don’t know how they think we’ve got room for all this clutter….”

Says my mum.

“What did you learn at school today?”

I consider this.

And somehow, I learned……. that what I made……was worthless.

.

But……

.

For about an hour

Just one hour

I’d made a spaceship so magnificent, so wonderful……

That someone had wanted it for their very own.

They’d admired it. Smiled at its silver. Seen cylinders that fire instead of loo rolls….

And the older I grow, I come to realise that it’s all about those hours - that are few and far between - when someone shares your vision…..

About something everyone else deems worthless……

When they look at your bottle tops

And see only stars

It’s those hours, I live for.