you've got princess problems

At age four, when we were princesses and my friend Veronica got to dress in a pretty, sparkly pink dresses from Halloween or what we could sneak away from my mom’s closet—this oddly included a fuchsia sequined tube top—I was delegated to queen.  This outfit didn’t have the flirty skirt or the dainty tiara that Veronica wore, spinning with her finger on the center of her head in ballerina-like fashion.  Rather, I was dressed in a red rayon sheath with long sleeves, complete with itchy faux-Dalmatian spotted collar.  I’m sure I was supposed to be the Queen of Hearts or any other queen you’d find in a fairy tale, but I felt miserable.  Charlie Brown getting a bag of rocks for Halloween miserable. 

I really, really hated that costume.  It felt heavy and hot.  It retained heat like foil on a Pyrex, and my cheeks flustered just from standing in it as I watched Veronica exalt in her frilly lightweight garb.  She made a boastful circle around me as I watched and pouted.  I never felt graceful or gorgeous or frilly as I assumed the frolicking Veronica did.  I never got to play princess and wear the silver tiara like she did.  I think she knew it too.  It made her prance harder.  It made her jump higher.  I think it’s why she suggested the game so often, not because she wanted us both to have fun or act out fairy tales.

No. When Veronica suggested, “playing princesses,” she meant “I’ll play princess, and George, you can play my mom.”  The way she pitched it, all excitement and hurried, breathless from the pure idea: that didn’t sound fun at all.  You can play my mom?

I watched her around the room, grabbing plastic jewelry from the Pretty, Pretty Princess game box.  I didn’t understand my authority as her mother, but she sure as hell didn’t listen to me when I said I wanted the pink jewelry.

Veronica made another airy twirl and pranced over to her plastic shelves before prancing back, her hair wipping up on purpose.  Her beads floating about just so.  This was playing princess?

Well, maybe at the sound of the first suggestion of it, I became intrigued, but once Veronica shoved me into her bathroom without a care to my own well-being, I already knew this wasn’t an activity I wanted to take part it.  Especially once I had the drab thing on and looked at my flushed, round face in the bathroom mirror. 

My hair was everywhere thanks to the static: baby hair standing stick straight up despite my two scrunchies tied at the top of my head and at the nape.  This?  This was royalty?  I looked like I was caught in a wind tunnel or roller bladed down a large hill.

When Veronica saw me she said I looked like a queen.  I complained about my hair, but she touched the top of my head and said I was perfect.

We made our way down the stairs to show our baby-sitter, picking up our skirts daintily ahead of us for our feet.  I feigned excitement at least.

“We’re so pretty,” Veronica cooed, straightening her tiara and waving her dinky staff towards the imaginary citizens of our kingdom waiting at the bottom.

“Yes,” I agreed, attempting to hide my discomfort.  I pulled at my collar again and Veronica adjusted it for me with a rough tug.

“You shouldn’t do that,” she urged, wrapping the fake fur tighter around my neck.  I questioned whether this were a ruse to rule our imagined kingdom on her own.  “Queens don’t take off their clothes.”

I glared at her, feeling my authority as queen give way.  I had to wear this ugly, drab thing and still take orders apparently.  This actually happened every single time.  When I wanted to take off the collar, Veronica snobbily said how I didn’t look the part anymore.  When I wanted to trade costumes once, she told me that the queen costume was more my size than hers.  I rubbed my small Buddha belly in embarrassment, but she actually meant smaller.  I was younger and an inch or two shorter than her.

“I had to be queen when I was your age,” she’d say as I went to go change again.  “When you’re older you can be the princess.”

And that seemed to make no sense at all.

Veronica was always going to be older than me.  I would never catch up to her, and besides, the queen was supposed to be the older one!  I told her so.

“Well,” she replied thoughtfully.  “Yes, but they’re my costumes.”

And that’s all it took.  Kid logic gave influence to the owner of the house, the owner of the toys, and the owner of the most convincing argument, which in this case belonged to Veronica.  I honestly lacked initiative as a kid, and yet again I shoved myself into that ridiculously itchy costume and walked steadfastly behind my prancing daughter, miserable.

One day, though, I came up with the best plan to get back at her.  It hit me so easily, I wasn’t sure why I never thought of it before.  If I wasn’t allowed to directly question the authority of the lower level royal—as a queen I lacked all kinds of power!  I was receiving all of the negatives and none of the benefits!—then I was simply going to play passive aggressively.

Now, like any kid whose mother eats peanuts during gestation, I had many allergies.  We didn’t know the source of many of them, being of the mind of “what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” I guess, but I’m pretty sure that one of them was fake fur, and rayon, and probably fake royalty, and discomfort. 

I felt it when I pulled the damn thing on.  My neck was starting to turn red.  

And then it struck me—aha!  A way out!

“It itches!” I implored, exaggerating my discomfort by rubbing my neck, hard, much harder than necessary.  I could feel my skin heat up under the abuse and felt more bumps rise up on the surface.  The more I irritated it, the more I felt my skin disfigure.  Good.  That would show her. 

That would show her real good.  I’ve seen my face when I had a break-out: not pretty.  Not even cute for a kid.  I wanted to frighten her.  I wanted to worry her.  I waited for the sympathy.

Now Kid Logic meant that when you were serious (ie: crying, bleeding, generally very mad) everyone took you seriously, even if you were having the time of your life blasting Nerf balls at a kid.  Once he started to cry, it was all over.  Fear struck you when you saw those tears, either of guilt or of possible parental intervention.  The crying kid in turned can stop too, because, well, it worked.  Your tears inspired the attack to end.  Your influence over your friends is both touching and respected.  Clearly your tears struck a nerve.  You have great power with your tear ducts, you realize.  You were taken seriously.

Granted, I couldn’t will myself to cry at this moment—I mastered that skill much later—so instead, I resolved towards whining and pain.

So, here I was using that card on Veronica.  I was seriously injured.  My skin by this point looked disfigured and bumpy like the skin of a raspberry, and I started to ease up on the scratches, sensing that my plan was taking negative outcomes I had not considered (ie: the actual discomfort).  Veronica looked at me, which I hoped would mean either a change in our roles or a change in the game altogether.  I inclined my neck, pulling the fabric and fur away to give her a better look, prepping for her pity, her tears, her apologies!

Only Veronica’s face wasn’t falling with sympathy.  She didn’t toss her tiara and scepter aside to come care for her queen mother and tell our peasants that I needed, needed attention now!  To please go get a midwife or perhaps a sorceress!  To, maybe, get the babysitter sitting in the kitchen watching Maury!  No.  Veronica placed both hands on her hips, her scepter still clutched in her tiny tight fist.  Her face crumpled into a scowl that wasn’t very princess-like or graceful.  Even now, I can see the tiny face of my four-year-old playmate just scrunch up in fury.  Maybe because the landscape of her face caved in, but her tiara drooped too, almost menacingly onto her forehead.  This messy five-year-old gave me the first death glare I have ever received, piercing my heart to the layer of red rayon.  I wish I still wore my Little Mermaid shirt under it.  At the time, I thought of how grown-up this was of us, undressing and really, really assuming a character.  Instead, I had real hives against fabric akin to a cat tongue, and I wasn’t feeling very betrayed by my pretend princess daughter, who was most likely going to steal my power as queen but still keep the title princess as it was younger and hipper.

It was a crossroads in our friendship.  Every playtime, I wore the horrendously matron-like gown and Veronica got to play delightful princess. Putting on that stupid dress was an unspoken agreement that meant that I was okay being the stodgy queen, which also meant that I was older, not required to prance.  Well, the joke was on her, because I liked prancing.  If I lived to be old like a queen—what was that? 28?—then I’d prance all the freakin’ time!  And if Veronica couldn’t see that through her selfish little tiara clad head, then I was going to pull out the big guns.

I was queen after all.

This is when I learned that life, if you haven't already figured it out, is simply like that game Pretty, Pretty Princess.  You know, where young girls need to get all the colored jewels first before deemed a "pretty, pretty princess" then the crown?  You also had the option of stealing it from another player, being the only crown the in box, so of course we grew into cut-throat women.  Well, Veronica, was the girl who didn't even play properly, she dumped out all the jewelry and wore them herself.

It was then that I pulled the last card of my petty arsenal, the taboo that is guaranteed to kill any play time: I ran off to tell.

Man was I a wimp.

I ran to our babysitter, Yvette.  I interrupted her television watching with a hot face, feeling my lips curling downward automatically but secretly pleased that my emotions were coming through.  I’m in pain!  I’m itchy!  I curled myself against her side and I didn’t say a word, even when I heard Veronica come in after me.

The babysitter wanted to know.  What’s wrong?

Nothing.  I curled myself into her side, exposing my neck and scratching my sides for good measure.  It got her attention as intended.

How did this happen?  She pulled at the Dalmation printed collar, untying the dress at my neck to see my bareback covered in irritated red splotches.  Georgette!

I shook my head but don’t say a word.

In retrospect, this was a little conniving of me, but I excuse this with the fact that understanding how to share one’s feelings is a little difficult for children to understand.  Also, I figured that this wasn’t tattling at all.  I was merely hugging Yvette mercilessly and scratching my body with exaggerated pain.

The truth eventually came out.  Yvette understood that my queen costume was bothering me—both psychologically and physically by this point—and Veronica was already receiving snide looks from us.

“She could have said,” Veronica said with a small impertinent stamp of her foot. She looked foolish in her princess gown.  “If she wanted to be the princess, then she could’ve said!”

Yvette, much to my pleasure, shushed her.  I pretended to rub my bottom in reluctant pain, inciting a hug from her.  “You need to play nicely,” was all she said.

Veronica huffed at this, but I could see, triumphantly, how she envied my attention, how the guilt was getting to her.  Good.  I couldn’t help but feeling like I won.

Just.

I was just so itchy.  All that exaggeration actually irritated my own skin under the dress.  I mean, it wasn’t that bad when I first wore it.  Sure it was stuffy under the fur collar and hot because of the fabric, but I kind of dug myself a hole in scratching so much.  I could feel my skin rise.  Large splotches popped up everywhere, and Yvette, unprepared for something like this, ended up rubbing me down with cocoa butter to staunch some of the very real pain caused from my very good acting.  I laid on a sheet on the floor without a shirt, lathered in butter, much like a pie crust I thought.  Veronica had to play alone.

The next day, when I stood in the middle of Veronica’s very clean room, watching her pull out the costumes.  I itched my neck for good measure.  I looked damaged from yesterday: much of the swelling went down but I was still red in some areas.  Still, my face was splotchy and I was under instruction to stop touching my skin.

But Veronica clucked her tongue sympathetically.  Her voice soft and charitable as she walked up to me and threw a pink princess gown at me.  It wasn’t the same one she always wore, I noted.

“It’s from the Halloween the year before,” she informed me coldly.  “You could wear it.”

And I wore it happily.  Veronica even gave in and put pink beads around my neck.  She said I looked pretty in a very nice way to let me know that she felt bad.  I felt cool, like what I imagine Kate Middleton feels every single day.

I took it because it felt weird not to.  Then again she must’ve not felt too horrible, because next thing I know, Veronica’s in her usual princess dress, bounding the staircase towards our fake kingdom to introduce her younger sister, me.

I just couldn’t get a break with that girl.