Exuberance and Exclamations!!!

I got a comment on my blog yesterday (my first comment, hooray!!!) that I shouldn't use "cuz" instead of "because" and should use bigger words cuz I obviously know them--sorry, because I obviously know them from reading and rereading Ma's New College Dictionary!!! Oh, and in my newfound and expansive eloquence I should endeavor to refrain from utilizing such a plethora of exclamation points. Yah. Whoopee. Fantastic.

Nah, just kidding!!! I'm trying to write the way I talk, and I almost always say "cuz" instead of "because" even though I know it's wrong. As for the exclamation points, I just love them to death and it seems wrong to only use one at a time!!! Heh!!!

By the way, Dr. Crisp says our town's high school has an excellent basketball team for girls. Not only that, but most colleges have women's teams, and there's professional league for women just like they have for men!!! I wasn't thinking about college yet, but if I can major in basketball and play on TV, I would love that!!!

Queen of the Tall Ones

I had a dream last night that I met a boy who was twenty feet tall. His smile made me feel like my insides were melting. He stretched out a hand toward me and said, "We've been waiting for you, Melinda."

"We who?" I asked.

"Me and others like us. The Tall Ones. We have our own country, far away, where the little people can't bother us." He pulled me in close and kissed me on the lips. He was bending down and I was on my toes. What passed between us was electric!!!

"Will you come with me and be our queen?" he asked.

Queen of the Tall Ones? Me? How could I refuse!!! But when I tried to speak, my lips were sealed shut and I couldn't make a sound.

"No?" he asked. His gorgeous face was plastered with disappointment.

I made wild gestures and tried to pry my lips apart.

"I will be back," he said. "Perhaps you will change your mind."

And then I woke up in my barn and milked the tiny little cows.

The Finals

Dr. Crisp said I should watch the basketball game tonight. It's "The Finals," whatever that means. I've never watched sports before, but wow! The men in yellow uniforms got way out to a big lead and then the men in green uniforms came back to win. It all happened so fast. Lots of passing and bouncing and shooting...

That basket they were shooting at would only come up to here on me, if you imagine me holding my hand against my hip. And I could carry the ball in my palm without having to bounce it against the floor. I could be a basketball star by standing in place, leaning over, and just dropping the ball into the net!!!

Do they let girls play basketball? I'll have to ask Dr. Crisp tomorrow.

Schooled by Dr. Crisp

I've never had a doctor before. I've never been sick for a day in my life, probably cuz the germs haven't figured out what to make of me. But Mrs. Johansson says I need regular check-ups to monitor my "condition," like somehow being 17 feet 10 and one half inches is a sickness that'll clear up with the right drugs!!!

So I get a weekly exam where Dr. Crisp draws my blood with a needle made for circus elephants, climbs up on a ladder to look into my ears, takes my measurements with a laser device, and asks me lots of questions. But he's cool about it. It's just his job, and if he wasn't doing it somebody else would have to instead.

Dr. Crisp is also on the school board and does after-school tutoring in the sciences. So when he's not working as my doctor, he's tutoring me in math and biology until the town figures out how the public high school can "fit me in." It won't happen this year, since there's only a couple weeks of the school left on the calendar, but I'm going to have to do a whole lot of studying this summer to catch up with the other kids my age.

I don't blame Ma and Pa for that. Ma tried to school me, in her own way, though she'd dropped out after 8th grade herself. She used to borrow books from the library, and I'd sit Ma on my knee while she read to me. After Ma died, Pa didn't have time for book-learning. I'd have to wait for Pa to go to sleep for the night so I could read and reread the large-print story books that Ma had left behind. And the bible. And the New College Dictionary. I wonder if the library wants those all back by now cuz I've memorized them all and have a new batch of books from Mrs. Appleton.

Just Normal Like

Thanks to Mr. Appleton, I have a computer in my barn and a special keyboard with big keys. I think it's meant for real little kids who mash their whole hands against each key but it works for my "giant sized" fingers as well. Mr. Appleton and Jay spent a whole afternoon last week wiring my barn for the Internet while I tended my cows out on the pasture.

The Appletons are letting me live like I have since Pa died, just normal like, but with stuff to help me learn about the outside world. As well as the computer, I've also got a TV and a stack of new books and magazines to read.

"You're big enough to live by yourself," Mr. Appleton told me.

"Both old enough and big enough," said Mrs. Appleton. "But if you need anything at all, we're just a holler away."

I told them I'd be sure to holler, but I don't imagine I'll ever need anything else from them. I already had everything I needed before I met them, and now I have even more.

So I've been reading all the Internet news stories about my "rampage" through town, and how I must be some kind of mutant or maybe there's something wrong with my pituitary gland. There are lots of pictures of me chained up and they're not at all flattering. It made me mad at first cuz these people don't know me and they keep getting everything wrong (like saying I'm 18 feet tall instead of 17 feet 10 and one half inches, just for starters).

Dr. Crisp said I could start a website of my own to tell my side of things, and to practice some of the writing stuff he's tutoring me on, so that's what I've done. "Giant Girl Rampages" will be my place on the web. I'll update it when I can and answer questions and stuff. It may be fun or it may be a total waste of time. I guess we'll find out!!!

Someday

Someday I'll meet a boy who's taller than me. I'll have to stand on tip-toes to kiss him. He'll lift me up by the waist and twirl me around and we'll laugh and laugh like the couples in the fashion magazines and romance novels Mrs. Appleton gave me to read.

Giant Girl Rampages Through Town

I took the name of this journal from a newspaper clipping on my wall. The headline is "Giant girl rampages through town". Embarrassing, right? Dr. Crisp says the media like to take a small story and blow it up into something big. Like how they keep saying I'm 18 feet tall. Puh-leeze!!! I'm 17 feet 10 and one half inches so stop exaggerating!!! Dr. Crisp thinks I might hit 18 feet by my sixteenth birthday (November 22nd if you want to buy me a gift) but I'm not there yet so don't go around saying Melly Mills is 18 feet tall until Melly Mills damn well says you can!!!

And if Melly Mills wanted to rampage through a town, believe me, that town would never be the same again. What really happened was, I walked calmly into town and people freeeeeeaked out. But that was just cuz they never met anyone like me before. And I'd never met anyone at all, really, except Ma and Pa. I'd never left our farm, or the middle acres of our farm, cuz Ma and Pa said folks on the outside would try to hurt me. But it was hard to stay there all on my own after Pa died and I buried his body next to Ma's in the plot beside their house.

I had well water and enough food to get me through the winter, plenty of milking and egg collecting to keep me busy, wood to chop for the stove, and my big pile of hay to sleep on in the barn. I didn't need nothing from outside the farm until Spring. That's when the fields needed planting and Pa wasn't around to buy the seed anymore. I figured he would have wanted me to look after the crops like I was already looking after the animals and myself.

So I squeezed into Ma and Pa's house, where the door is normal sized and I hadn't been able to fit through since I was seven. I got stuck, of course, and had to break the frame to get free. I broke a whole lot of furniture and other stuff too, crawling through the house on my hands and knees. If Ma or Pa were still around to see what a mess I'd made, they would have hollered at me good!!!

Ma and Pa kept their money in a cookie jar in the kitchen. I guess that's safe to say now, since it's not there anymore. I grabbed the jar off the refrigerator, stuffed it into the side pocket of my blouse, and backed out the way I'd come in. It's just a good thing they didn't keep their money up in their bedroom cuz that rickety old staircase would have never held my weight.

That's when I calmly strolled into town and, well, you know the rest. Helicopters, sharpshooters, tranquilizer guns, and I woke up in the town square with all my limbs chained to different lamp posts and little people running all around me. It was like that book, Gulliver's Travels, that Ma used to read to me.

The state said I couldn't live on my own anymore cuz I'm not 18 yet, no matter how big I am. And the state is represented by the person of shrill Mrs. Johansson, She Who Will Not Be Ignored. So the Appletons are my temporary guardians for now. They're strange but nice, and they have a son named Jay who is about my age. Jay doesn't talk much or at least not to me. I think he's shy.

The Appletons own an orchard on the west side of my family's farm, so I can stay here in my barn and just let them look in on me when they want. Mr. Appleton says I can help with the fruit picking in the Fall. I think he's just glad for somebody who can reach the tall branches. Being taller than everybody else is finally going to be good for something!!!