Believe it or not, I waited to write my wiki homework until now because I thought that if I waited longer I might be able to remember an awesome, justice-packed story from my life. Well, it still has not come to me. I mean, if I am not even completely clear on what justice is, how can I pinpoint an event from my life that accurately demonstrates justice? I have decided to go ahead with the 'balance' thing and tell one of the first stories that came to mind.

My family is not your typical family. Not that any family is 'typical,' but for some reason our eccentricity has been problematic at times in the various communities in which we have lived. Throughout my elementary school years, my family and I lived in a small East Bay community, called Orinda. My family did not fit in many ways. We did not belong to a country club, we did not drive fancy cars, my parents did not go out of their way to be friendly and false and we were liberal, spiritual, whatever it might be that the majority of Orinda families were not or pretended not to be.

For me, personally, it made it hard for me to feel welcome among my peers. There was one girl, Kimberly, with whom I particularly had problems almost immediately in kindergarten. In climax of our problems, we fought, she told me I could not go to her birthday party, I slapped her and got sent to the principal’s office and that was it. It may seem trivial, but we always had problems after that throughout school and into sixth grade.

Then, late in our sixth grade year – by then I knew I was moving to London – Kimberly came to me one day and wanted to talk. So we sat down and I listened to her as she told me about the horrible troubles her family was having and that her parents were soon to be divorced. I knew how hard Kimberly was taking it and tried as best as I could to comfort her. We never talked much after this event, but I have always remembered my two key encounters with her as very different, but somehow balanced events. I’ll explain what I mean in class.

Posted at Jul 05/2007 01:23AM:
Al: Wow, you've lived all over the world, Antonia--that's amazing. Until this last year, I'd lived in the same 20-mile radius all of my life. I'd like to hear more about what you mean by this sense of balance in the two key Kimberly episodes--isn't it interesting how in memory, complex and long relationships often become boiled down to a few, significant events?

See you in the morning.