The fact that no sequel to Private Benjamin was in the works, or that a third-grader wouldn’t be negotiating her own contract with the star of the movie and her live-in lover, hadn’t dawned on me.

“Yeah, well, that was kind of a lie,” I mumbled, recovering my left mitten from in between my butt cheeks.

“What?” he asked, astounded. “You lied? Everyone has been talking about it. Everyone thinks it’s so cool.”

“Really?” I asked, quickly changing my tune, realizing the magnitude of what had happened. It occurred to me that this was the perfect opportunity to get some of the respect I believed had been denied me, due to my father dropping me off in front of the school in a 1967 banana yellow Yugo. It was 1984, and my father had no idea of or interest in how damaging his 1967 Yugo had been to my social status. He had driven me to school on a couple of really cold days, and even after I had pleaded with him to drop me off down the street, he was adamant about me not catching a cold.

“Dad,” I would tell him over and over again, “the weather has nothing to do with catching a cold. It has to do with your immune system. Please let me walk. Please!”

“Don’t be stupid,” he would tell me. “That’s child abuse.”

I wanted my father to know that child abuse was embarrassing your daughter on a regular basis with no clue at all as to the repercussions. Word had spread like wildfire throughout the school about what kind of car my father drove, and before I knew it, the older girls in fifth grade would follow me through the hallways calling me “poor” and “ugly.” After a couple of months they upped it from “ugly” to “a dog,” and would bark at me anytime they saw me in the hallway.