Bunn’s Prairie

The next few years were rough; rough on me, rough on my folks, and rough on Bunn. Here I was, steamrolling towards the “teenage” years like a freight train, and wanting nothing more than to be LIKE EVERYONE ELSE. It’s funny how our perspectives change in adulthood, where our individuality, uniqueness and independence are so valued. As a teenage girl, my hair had to be just right, my clothes like the other girls (heaven forbid you didn’t safety-pin your jeans tightly around your ankles, or tease your bangs up into a wall of hairsprayed curls!). Maybe it was because I had health issues in addition, but somehow simply belonging felt like the most important niche to find.

One of the horrid parts about this age in preteen and teenage life, is that kids make fun of anyone they can that doesn’t completely fit their mold. They CAN and WILL be cruel. It helps them feel as though they have achieved a more important level of social status to point out and ridicule other “mate’s” differences.

Cliques were fierce, and the comments sometimes bit so hard, they made me cry. No one had any idea what being diabetic meant, except that it set me apart every time I had to test my blood sugar, take a shot, or had an insulin reaction. My blood sugars were erratic without any hindering factors, but quite simply, I didn’t always want to have to say that I had to stop to take care of one of my diabetic “problems”. I could draw very little attention to myself, and still cover the basics, assuming that was good enough. Diabetes, on the other hand, doesn’t allow itself to quietly take a back seat to everything else. There were times I had no choice but to attend to my immediate health needs. When I’d have an insulin reaction in school, it was a BIG deal, at least to me…

One day in the library, a few of the “popular” (Ok, Jenny, Jenni, and Debbie…I haven’t forgotten you) crowd were making fun of me for needing to leave and grab my juice and Gluco-tabs. I was in tears…shaky and confused from my insulin reaction, and hurting inside from their jabs. When I got back, I wrapped myself up in one of the big stuffed reading animals (the orangutan was my favorite to snuggle into) and tried to lose my hurt in a book.

It was sometime around then that I started bringing Bunn to school with me (when I could squeeze him in my backpack). Especially during that first year, I would come back from the nurse’s office at the start of lunch, and eat my food out in the hallway with Bunn tucked under my arm, instead of heading for the cafeteria. I didn’t like the special lunch bag I had to carry (when everyone else bought their lunch or brown bagged it), but Bunn didn’t care. He understood that I wasn’t freaky like had been suggested, and maybe just needed a hug to feel better.

Out in public, I didn’t feel any less awkward. Not for years. At the shopping mall once, I was trying to balance my insulin and syringe in the bathroom to give my shot before we ate, when a woman with her daughter were alongside me at the sink. She completely ignored the fact that I was no more than two feet away, and NOT out of earshot, when she proceeded to tell her child, “This is why we don’t do drugs.” WHAT WAS THAT???

Another time, when I was in junior high, I had a pretty severe insulin reaction at school. Somehow, I did manage to end up at the nurse’s office that morning. Unfortunately, my usual nurse was out that day, and the substitute nurse didn’t recognize the symptoms of an insulin reaction. Being pretty out of it, I remember little of my visit there, other than the fact that once she figured out who I was, she proceeded to call Mom at home and explain that her daughter was most likely drunk, and in the nurse’s office “not feeling well”. You (and I) can only imagine what my mother said on the other end of the phone, but I think my parents were down to the school in less than five minutes.

Somehow, Bunn and I made it through the throws of adolescence. Not without our lasting imprints, but still intact. By that point, we had attended a lot of slumber parties, fallen off of our share of sailboats at camp (both of us, once!), and safely survived the make-up and hair travesties of junior high. Bunn would forever carry a strange stain of “Pink Ivory” Cover Girl foundation, and had found himself in need of both arm and ear reattachment procedures. Mom started to joke that Bunn was looking a little “flat” these days, and, well, he was. We hadn’t quite made the connection yet, but Bunn was well on his was to becoming “REAL”, just like the Velveteen Rabbit.