Now that I was a little bit better at making friends, it was now time to start my lifelong quest for love. My parents were busy providing for our family of 8 growing up, and so I was essentially raised by the television. It was through the medium of television and movies that I was constantly shown what “love” looked like. And so, seeing Corey and Topanga, Marge and Homer, Sabrina and Harvey, Ross and Rachel, Seth and Summer, and Ash and Misty all motivated me to find my soul mate.
Of course, this wasn’t going to realistically happen in elementary school. Despite having male friends now, I was deadly afraid of the opposite gender. In a way I was still recovering from the shock of pretend fainting in kindergarten. I made the mistake of telling my friend at the time my crush. He went ahead and told my crush’s best friend, who obviously told my crush within seconds. One day, at the handball courts, she came up to me and said behind my back directly “Le is gay.” It didn’t make a lot of sense because I was definitely straight, considering I liked her, but it was her way of rejecting me. It definitely hurt at the time, being my first rejection, but I look back now and can comfortably laugh about it because it was so juvenile.
6th grade was also notable for my least favorite teacher Mrs. Mildenstein. Every week we had map tests identifying certain countries and states in the world. I noticed she made an error one week in grading my test, and so I went up to her directly and told her she made a mistake. She immediately rebuked me and told me “I remember grading your test. You clearly erased your answer and rewrote your answers for a higher score.” I was shocked, mortified, and surprised to see my teacher accuse me of cheating. From that point on, I absolutely deplored her and resented her for the rest of the year. This experience taught me the importance of teachers and the value of relationship building and devastating consequences of false accusations.
Despite these challenges, my time at Stanford Elementary turned out to be a significantly better experience compared to Pyles. I made friends, experienced rejection, and spent the entire summer hanging out with my neighbors. As the years went by, nothing could have prepared me for the shock and awkwardness that awaited me in middle school.
