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Back in elementary school, I was a rambunctious little fox; all throughout my Kindergarten year, I would act out all the time. I didn't like being in a foreign place; it scared the piss out of me (one time, literally). By the second grade, this behavior had calmed down. Since I have been around the same kids for three years at that point, I had already gotten to know all of them, and they became something of family to me. If you guys have read my other stories about my family, you'd know that my real family were something of douchebags: my dad was abusive, my brother was a bully; my mother was the only person I felt safe around.

In the second grade, I had a lot of good friends. One of them is a girl who we're going to call Ashleigh. I wasn't too close to Ashleigh; we would talk, but not everyday. She was pretty good at conversation; she wasn't boring, she was engaging. She had brown hair, square glasses, and most importantly, she lived right down the street from me.

One day, Ashleigh invited me to her birthday party. Me, being a good friend and seeing an opportunity to get away from the family for a few hours, decided to go. I told my mother that I wanted to go to her party, and she was cool with me being there for a few hours. I believe that my mother knew her parents, and she was on good terms with them. Therefore, it was a guarantee; I was going to my friend's party.

The day of the party (I'd like to say it was on a Saturday), my mother took me out to get a card for Ashleigh, since I didn't have enough money to get her an actual gift. It was a nice card. But this is where I start messing up. Instead of writing Ashleigh's name on the envelope, I wrote my own name on it because seven-year-old me thought it made more sense to write who it's from rather than who it's for. My mother caught this mistake and quickly fixed it to say "To: Ashleigh, From: Toni."

When I get to the party, my mother drops me off. I go inside the house and tell Ashleigh happy birthday. And it was there that I realized I was the only guy at the party. There were four or five other guests there, and all of them were girls around me and Ashleigh's age.

Immediately my first reaction is, "Oh... I'm seriously out of place here."

Ashleigh introduces me to the other girls. Honestly, I don't remember any of their names because I never saw any of them after this day. Which sounds bad, but I promise it isn't... yet.

Even though I was the only male in a party full of women, it went as any other normal birthday party. There was dinner, cake and ice cream; Ashleigh got to open her gifts in front of the whole party. One of them was a board game from a popular kids show at the time. I want to say it was iCarly, but I could be wrong. We spent most of the evening doing typical party stuff; we played some games, we ate dinner, we laughed and joked and whatnot.

Eventually, we all went outside to play in the backyard. Ashleigh's folks had a trampoline in their backyard, and we had permission to jump around as long as an adult was with us. I remember when I was with them, Ashleigh told me, "It's fine to jump high on it, but don't jump directly on the center of the trampoline." She warned us that doing so would make you go too high and that you could hurt yourself.

Now, because I was a bold and stupid child, I waited until everyone else got off. And everybody who's reading this knows exactly what I'm about to do next. I remember I looked up at the moon, which was completely full and bright, and thought that I wanted to jump up high enough to touch it. I was seven, okay? I hadn't fully grasped the concept of space and distance.

I gave myself a running start -- err, jumping start -- and stomped down on the center as hard as I could so I could jump. I went up in the air pretty high. I was afraid of heights, but for once, I didn't feel fear, I felt a rush of air and adrenaline. I was on top of the world! That is, until gravity woke up and pulled me back down, and I landed stomach first back onto the trampoline hard. It kind of hurt, but I was okay. All I thought was how awesome of a feeling it was; almost like flying, like I was free from everything!

We went back inside once it got too dark. And this is where the fuckshit begins to happen. Prepare to judge me super hard for this, but I can explain myself.

It was dark, around 9 o'clock, and it was getting close for the kids to go to sleep since it was technically a sleepover. Since I was the only guy there, my parents had planned for me to go home before I went to sleep. But here's the thing: at seven years old, I didn't feel safe around my folks. I took any excuse to not be home that I could. This meant that if I left this party, I would have to go back to my asshole-ish family that I didn't want to be around. So, I told the rest of the girls that I didn't want to go home, I was having a lot of fun with them. Was there any chance I could possibly spend the night here?

Ashleigh's parents weren't really sure how to answer that. Her mom was friends with my mom, so it must've felt weird to her, letting me stay with her daughter and four other girls.

The girls talked amongst themselves about this. One of them eventually tells me, "We don't mind if you stay the night. But we get to dress you, put makeup on you, etc."

And me, being desperate, said, "... okay."

Now I know you're judging me very much right now, but I'm just gonna say it if you're still confused: When I was seven, I gave five other girls permission to fully dress your boy up in drag and put makeup on my face. Go ahead; laugh. I know you're going to.

I'll wait.

...

Don't worry, this story gets even better (not). The girls and I came up with a "plan": I was going to hide in Ashleigh's laundry room until my parents came and went, in hopes that they wouldn't find me so I didn't have to leave. For some reason, we told Ashleigh's parents about this; probably thinking that if they knew, they wouldn't be surprised if I was still there. That is a plan only seven-year-olds could come up with.

The girls actually helped me get on top of the laundry machine, and they slid the door shut. For a moment, I actually believed this was going to work. That is, until my mother opened the laundry door and found me. I'd like to say one of the girls snitched, but it didn't look like any of them did.

So yeah, my mother found me, made me get my shoes on and we drove back to our house. Of course, Ashleigh's parents told my mom everything. She wasn't a fan of the idea of me looking feminine, so to this day, she holds this story over my head to embarrass me.

As far as I know, Ashleigh still lives at the same house this party took place at; I've delivered pizza to her a few times on the job. Unfortunately, she was always on the phone, so I couldn't say hello, ask how she was doing, and catch up with her. But, I believe she has a kid now, and she looked like she was doing okay. I don't know if she remembers this party or not, but hopefully she doesn't. It was a pretty stupid thing, what I tried to do. Haha.

And there you have it. The lesson to take away from this is: if your parents have an embarrassing story and they tell others about it, make sure you have an equal amount of dirt on them. Say, for example, the time my mother stole chicken nuggets from a McDonalds because she didn't look through the entire bag and spent a good five minutes complaining to the employees there. She got new nuggets, only to drive away later and see that the original ones were at the bottom of the bag the entire time.

Oh boy. I hope you guys enjoyed my diary entry. If you could, please share these stories around, get some laughs out of your friends, and I'll see you guys next time, once I figure out how a washing machine can support a seven-year-old's weight.

Toni Q. McAlister

March 16th, 2021

-March 24th, 2021