{"id":72,"date":"2017-05-04T17:08:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T17:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-teaching-autoethnography\/chapter\/i-told-you-so\/"},"modified":"2017-05-04T18:09:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T18:09:43","slug":"i-told-you-so","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-teaching-autoethnography\/chapter\/i-told-you-so\/","title":{"raw":"I Told You So","rendered":"I Told You So"},"content":{"raw":"
\r\n\r\nWhen I was a baby my legs were really <\/i>big, especially my thighs. My mom said everyone commented on them, \u201cLook at her thighs. They\u2019re huge!\u201d I look at pictures of them and agree. They look like the Michelin Man or the Pillsbury Doughboy, chunky and wide. My eating habits were testimony to those meaty limbs, as it is claimed that I ate eleven pieces of lamb in one sitting at my aunt\u2019s house at age two, everyone gawking at me certainly did not faze me as my hands moved from one bone to the next. My legs were chubby, but like most baby fat they faded away over the years.\r\n\r\nJump to elementary school and I am tiny. Small all over, my legs nowhere near as plump as they were before. I am short and I am very thin. I don\u2019t like the sandwiches Mommy makes me every day so I eat everything but the crust (a whopping three whole bites with my teeny mouth). These legs are petite and as thin as toothpicks, covered weekly with a new scab here and a new scab there. One day before school in first grade I shake with excitement while my mom ties my brand new Keds on. They\u2019re pink with letters on one face of the shoe and green zigzags on the other. I hop up after she\u2019s done, sprint down the two flights of stairs and I\u2019m off, headed for Baba\u2019s green Civic so ready for school and\u2014BOOM\u2014I\u2019m down. I\u2019m sobbing and Mom\u2019s carrying me in and my knee\u2019s bleeding a whole bunch and she\u2019s cursing those new Keds because she \u201cKnew it, I just knew they were too big Jillian I should have never let you get them in the first place.\u201d I walk in late to school and stroll into class with a big gash in my knee once embedded with rocks now instead covered by two Band-Aids. One just wasn\u2019t thick enough to cover the battle scar.\r\n\r\nCuts are not the only thing that shift places and show up on my legs. I have hair, blonde and brown but thin, too young for me to shave yet so they streak and shine in the light. Past the little hairs are mosquito bites. Always<\/i> there, never to leave. Not because they bite me all year round, rather my fingers scratch them again and again. So close to healing but then my nail feels one scab, and off it goes again, destined to never disappear as they should and instead leave a pinkish mark faded but always there. These marks that make my mom tell me \u201cYou look like a leper,\u201d or \u201cWell there goes your leg modeling career,\u201d (which we all know is a joke because I don\u2019t grow past five foot three after tenth grade) and the most popular, \u201cJillian Mary! Stop scratching those things they are going to scar. Forever.<\/i>\u201d\r\n\r\nI have a birthmark on my ankle. Not a dark one like the ones women draw on their face, but instead a little brown freckle slightly raised, and I hated it. It was always there and so, of course, it always bugged me. One day at a family dinner party it peeked right above my sandal strap and that was it. The nails equipped to pick at scabs upon scabs were ready, and they went at it. I picked at that thing for an hour, and finally, it gave in. The little brown fleck gave way and slowly raised. Alas it ripped off, but to my horror it started bleeding. I panicked and didn\u2019t want anyone to see, especially Mommy, so I covered it with my hand as my eyes searched frantically for a napkin. Good, I had replaced the millimeter-wide freckle with a gush of blood and a napkin and a hand, much less noticeable, much less eye- attracting. That night, once the bleeding had stopped, I looked at the little dig out on my ankle and cried. How could I have been so stupid?! That freckle was a part of me and I had erased it, what if it never returned? So I waited, checking the scab nightly, but unlike the mosquito bites this would not be touched, I needed it to go back to its normal form. Finally after fourteen days of care and caution, I looked and sighed a big happy sigh of relief. It had returned, and it is still there now, located on my right inner ankle, approximately half an inch below that knobby bone that juts out.\r\n\r\nI look back through a photo album of my fifth-grade graduation. My mom walks by and she cringes, \u201cGod you were so thin. You look sickly.\u201d I gaze at pictures of me beaming ear to ear next to teachers and friends and I have to agree. The angles of my face are far too chiseled for the face of a child. My chin juts out like a sharp knife and the tendons on my neck are far too visible. That was the outcome of me not eating those sandwiches, those were pictures taken only a month before my doctor told my mom I was severely underweight. The night after the doctors I sit down for dinner. That night, like most nights, the food stares back at me for one, two, three hours. Everything is eaten but my salad, and now it is soggy with dressing that I don\u2019t particularly like. My mom gets tired of waiting to do the dishes, but this time it\u2019s different. She comes back and she\u2019s crying and she\u2019s screaming. She\u2019s scared for me, blames herself because I refuse to take care of myself. And then I\u2019m crying, I don\u2019t want her to be upset. I sit on her lap and cry and she looks at me, \u201cThat\u2019s it. This is done. No more of this you have to eat so we don\u2019t have to get in trouble with the doctor again.\u201d I agree and sit down. I eat my salad piece by piece and ignore the feeling in my stomach that says, \u201cNo more. No more.\u201d<\/i> This night is followed by the constant nag and worry of my mom. A yearly finger crossing when I step on the scale at the doctor\u2019s office is expected and fear of me ever leaving her watchful eye becomes quite apparent.\r\n\r\nI ran track in sophomore year, against my mother\u2019s wishes, \u201cYou lose one pound and you\u2019re off the team, I\u2019m not joking.\u201d Nervous to keep my mom happy, I kept the weight from runner\u2019s highs and Friday night pasta parties. So yes, I ran. Well, I ran half of the season anyways. Midway, Coach Kaminski yells, \u201cMcDonnell, you\u2019re signed up for the walk Sunday.\u201d Everyone laughs and I argue but he won\u2019t change his mind. So that Sunday I speed walk one mile in the correct form. Legs landing unbent, nineteen other girls and I get to waddle around an indoor track for ten minutes in spandex that rides up your butt. It\u2019s walking, but it\u2019s sure not easy, I get off the track grateful that my torture has ended. My legs feel like noodles, I don\u2019t know how to walk the right way again until the next morning, a morning teamed with lots of Advil to kill the pain, the pain from walking. Each morning after an intense workout or a race my mom laughs and then nags, \u201cWhat\u2019s the point? You don\u2019t need to run track you\u2019re just killing yourself for nothing.\u201d Yet I get sucked into doing the walk again and again, and finally am granted the high and prestigious honor of \u201cDobbs Ferry\u2019s Number One Speed Walker\u201d out of the whole two girls doing it (me being one of them). After every race my legs feel like noodles, and they look like them too, the petite shape from elementary school never went away, but now two friends are added and during that sophomore year of winter track, I get the nickname Boobs and, even more clever, Boobian.\r\n\r\nMy mom doesn\u2019t want me to leave for school. Why would she when I\u2019m a \u201cTrain ride away Jillian everyone does the commute. You could even get rides from Mr. Scroope he is right next door!\u201d These comments result in constant fighting and constant tears. I am so frustrated with my mom, how could she not trust me to leave, I can take care of myself I am not an infant. I beg and plead and finally I get the monotonous answer a thousand times, \u201cDo what you want, but you can pay for dorming yourself.\u201d And to her surprise I do.\r\n\r\nI don\u2019t feel pain like the speed walk again until college, in a spin class I was talked into going to by my roommates. I take the class as a newbie, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, but I do it all the same. My legs continue to bounce out of the feet holders and I keep pausing and going, a perfect forty-five minutes of \u201cWhen is this over?\u201d<\/i> and \u201cHow did I end up in the front<\/i>? I look like a complete fool<\/i>.\u201d<\/i> Finally it\u2019s over, and I feel the noodle legs once again, but the pain was not contained in that forty-five minutes. My legs can\u2019t move, they are so sore I limp through my week of classes, and finally they have me in an ER. That\u2019s right, like a great TLC special, Spin Class Sent Me to the ER.<\/i> I go expecting three hours of fluids, because they say I have something called Rhabdomyolysis and I am probably dehydrated. After sitting on the bed for two hours with an IV in one arm and a needle puncture in another, I feel a smile of excitement come on because I can\u2019t wait to get out of the place. But no, I get to stay overnight because the last blood test shows elevated levels. The doctor tells me this bad news and now I\u2019m scared. I call the house phone and dread the answer I\u2019ll get but, \u201cWe\u2019ll be right there Jill.\u201d I have to keep sitting like this, trapped to the IV that keeps beeping, my \u201cdancing partner.\u201d I feel fine physically, but I can\u2019t help but keep tearing.\r\n\r\nI cry when my mom comes in, she looks so frightened for me, \u201cHow did this happen?! I don\u2019t understand.\u201d And runs over to me arms outstretched crying just as much. I keep tearing the entire night, my eyes redder and puffier each time my dancing partner and I wheel ourselves over to the bathroom. During one trip I don\u2019t sit down right away, and instead fling my fists around to no destination and think loudly, \u201cThis doesn\u2019t happen to anyone what the <\/i>fuck is happening to me.\u201d <\/i>Finally my mom looks at me and pleads, \u201cPlease talk to me Jillian,\u201d and I throw the covers over my face curl myself up into the tightest ball possible and release. I sob big heaving sobs and in between each I admit word by word I can\u2019t stay overnight and I just want to go home. I hate letting her see me like this, this is just the thing she needs, the \u201cI told you so\u201d of the century, but I can\u2019t help it. I need her, I know I do. So when she offers to stay overnight I quietly say, \u201cNo it\u2019s ok, you need your sleep,\u201d but I know she\u2019ll ignore me and answers to the nurse, \u201cCan we get another pillow please? I feel fine, but I\u2019m stuck, no way to get out of it. That night my legs start to swell, they feel worse than they ever have. My little toothpick legs swell so large they are touching each other just like they did when I was a baby, but this time I\u2019m hurt. I\u2019m crying and the ice packs aren\u2019t working, the Advil\u2019s not working and the hot packs aren\u2019t working. I keep feeling them tighten and tighten, my body squirming with an endless discomfort. Finally the doctor comes in and says, \u201cOk go give her the heavy stuff.\u201d I don\u2019t even know what it is until I\u2019m injected with a clear liquid when I hear the nurse say to my mom \u201cmorphine\u201d and then I\u2019m out.\r\n\r\nI wake up the next morning and my IV\u2019s pinching me. I\u2019m a bit dazed, but Mom\u2019s right next to me. She\u2019s sleeping but she\u2019s doing so much more. She\u2019s just\u2026there. As always, but now she\u2019s just the only comfortable thing in this room. This room where they stick me with needles every six hours. This room where they come back with good and then terrible answers leaving me confused and disappointed. She\u2019s here like she always is, and there is nothing more comfortable then feeling her warm figure against mine in this tiny hospital bed.\r\n\r\nAnother nurse comes and she fixes the IV but a spurt of blood comes out. She sighs and starts removing the sheets so she can bring me a clean set. She lifts the covers off of my now semi-swollen legs, looks at them and says, \u201cWhat are these, mosquito bites?! Don\u2019t you know if you keep scratching them they\u2019re gonna scar?\u201d I look over at my mom and she looks right back with a look of, \u201cI told you so.\u201d\r\n
\r\n

Discussion Questions<\/h3>\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • Why would somebody want to read this piece (the \u201cWho cares?\u201d factor)?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Can you clearly identify the author\u2019s intention for the piece?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • How well does the author support the intention of the piece? Cite specific details that support or take away from the author\u2019s intention.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Is there information missing from this piece that would make its intention clearer? What else would you like to know?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Does the author portray herself as a round character? How does she do this?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Do you trust the author of this piece? Why or why not?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • How clearly does the author establish a sense of setting\/space in this piece? Cite specific details that support your claim.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • How clearly does the author establish characters other than the self in this piece? Cite specific details that support your claim.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Did you learn anything new from reading this piece? If so, what?<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Are there particular passages with engaging language\/description that stood out to you? Describe the appeal of these passages.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Would you read more writing from this author? Why or why not?<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"
    \n

    When I was a baby my legs were really <\/i>big, especially my thighs. My mom said everyone commented on them, \u201cLook at her thighs. They\u2019re huge!\u201d I look at pictures of them and agree. They look like the Michelin Man or the Pillsbury Doughboy, chunky and wide. My eating habits were testimony to those meaty limbs, as it is claimed that I ate eleven pieces of lamb in one sitting at my aunt\u2019s house at age two, everyone gawking at me certainly did not faze me as my hands moved from one bone to the next. My legs were chubby, but like most baby fat they faded away over the years.<\/p>\n

    Jump to elementary school and I am tiny. Small all over, my legs nowhere near as plump as they were before. I am short and I am very thin. I don\u2019t like the sandwiches Mommy makes me every day so I eat everything but the crust (a whopping three whole bites with my teeny mouth). These legs are petite and as thin as toothpicks, covered weekly with a new scab here and a new scab there. One day before school in first grade I shake with excitement while my mom ties my brand new Keds on. They\u2019re pink with letters on one face of the shoe and green zigzags on the other. I hop up after she\u2019s done, sprint down the two flights of stairs and I\u2019m off, headed for Baba\u2019s green Civic so ready for school and\u2014BOOM\u2014I\u2019m down. I\u2019m sobbing and Mom\u2019s carrying me in and my knee\u2019s bleeding a whole bunch and she\u2019s cursing those new Keds because she \u201cKnew it, I just knew they were too big Jillian I should have never let you get them in the first place.\u201d I walk in late to school and stroll into class with a big gash in my knee once embedded with rocks now instead covered by two Band-Aids. One just wasn\u2019t thick enough to cover the battle scar.<\/p>\n

    Cuts are not the only thing that shift places and show up on my legs. I have hair, blonde and brown but thin, too young for me to shave yet so they streak and shine in the light. Past the little hairs are mosquito bites. Always<\/i> there, never to leave. Not because they bite me all year round, rather my fingers scratch them again and again. So close to healing but then my nail feels one scab, and off it goes again, destined to never disappear as they should and instead leave a pinkish mark faded but always there. These marks that make my mom tell me \u201cYou look like a leper,\u201d or \u201cWell there goes your leg modeling career,\u201d (which we all know is a joke because I don\u2019t grow past five foot three after tenth grade) and the most popular, \u201cJillian Mary! Stop scratching those things they are going to scar. Forever.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

    I have a birthmark on my ankle. Not a dark one like the ones women draw on their face, but instead a little brown freckle slightly raised, and I hated it. It was always there and so, of course, it always bugged me. One day at a family dinner party it peeked right above my sandal strap and that was it. The nails equipped to pick at scabs upon scabs were ready, and they went at it. I picked at that thing for an hour, and finally, it gave in. The little brown fleck gave way and slowly raised. Alas it ripped off, but to my horror it started bleeding. I panicked and didn\u2019t want anyone to see, especially Mommy, so I covered it with my hand as my eyes searched frantically for a napkin. Good, I had replaced the millimeter-wide freckle with a gush of blood and a napkin and a hand, much less noticeable, much less eye- attracting. That night, once the bleeding had stopped, I looked at the little dig out on my ankle and cried. How could I have been so stupid?! That freckle was a part of me and I had erased it, what if it never returned? So I waited, checking the scab nightly, but unlike the mosquito bites this would not be touched, I needed it to go back to its normal form. Finally after fourteen days of care and caution, I looked and sighed a big happy sigh of relief. It had returned, and it is still there now, located on my right inner ankle, approximately half an inch below that knobby bone that juts out.<\/p>\n

    I look back through a photo album of my fifth-grade graduation. My mom walks by and she cringes, \u201cGod you were so thin. You look sickly.\u201d I gaze at pictures of me beaming ear to ear next to teachers and friends and I have to agree. The angles of my face are far too chiseled for the face of a child. My chin juts out like a sharp knife and the tendons on my neck are far too visible. That was the outcome of me not eating those sandwiches, those were pictures taken only a month before my doctor told my mom I was severely underweight. The night after the doctors I sit down for dinner. That night, like most nights, the food stares back at me for one, two, three hours. Everything is eaten but my salad, and now it is soggy with dressing that I don\u2019t particularly like. My mom gets tired of waiting to do the dishes, but this time it\u2019s different. She comes back and she\u2019s crying and she\u2019s screaming. She\u2019s scared for me, blames herself because I refuse to take care of myself. And then I\u2019m crying, I don\u2019t want her to be upset. I sit on her lap and cry and she looks at me, \u201cThat\u2019s it. This is done. No more of this you have to eat so we don\u2019t have to get in trouble with the doctor again.\u201d I agree and sit down. I eat my salad piece by piece and ignore the feeling in my stomach that says, \u201cNo more. No more.\u201d<\/i> This night is followed by the constant nag and worry of my mom. A yearly finger crossing when I step on the scale at the doctor\u2019s office is expected and fear of me ever leaving her watchful eye becomes quite apparent.<\/p>\n

    I ran track in sophomore year, against my mother\u2019s wishes, \u201cYou lose one pound and you\u2019re off the team, I\u2019m not joking.\u201d Nervous to keep my mom happy, I kept the weight from runner\u2019s highs and Friday night pasta parties. So yes, I ran. Well, I ran half of the season anyways. Midway, Coach Kaminski yells, \u201cMcDonnell, you\u2019re signed up for the walk Sunday.\u201d Everyone laughs and I argue but he won\u2019t change his mind. So that Sunday I speed walk one mile in the correct form. Legs landing unbent, nineteen other girls and I get to waddle around an indoor track for ten minutes in spandex that rides up your butt. It\u2019s walking, but it\u2019s sure not easy, I get off the track grateful that my torture has ended. My legs feel like noodles, I don\u2019t know how to walk the right way again until the next morning, a morning teamed with lots of Advil to kill the pain, the pain from walking. Each morning after an intense workout or a race my mom laughs and then nags, \u201cWhat\u2019s the point? You don\u2019t need to run track you\u2019re just killing yourself for nothing.\u201d Yet I get sucked into doing the walk again and again, and finally am granted the high and prestigious honor of \u201cDobbs Ferry\u2019s Number One Speed Walker\u201d out of the whole two girls doing it (me being one of them). After every race my legs feel like noodles, and they look like them too, the petite shape from elementary school never went away, but now two friends are added and during that sophomore year of winter track, I get the nickname Boobs and, even more clever, Boobian.<\/p>\n

    My mom doesn\u2019t want me to leave for school. Why would she when I\u2019m a \u201cTrain ride away Jillian everyone does the commute. You could even get rides from Mr. Scroope he is right next door!\u201d These comments result in constant fighting and constant tears. I am so frustrated with my mom, how could she not trust me to leave, I can take care of myself I am not an infant. I beg and plead and finally I get the monotonous answer a thousand times, \u201cDo what you want, but you can pay for dorming yourself.\u201d And to her surprise I do.<\/p>\n

    I don\u2019t feel pain like the speed walk again until college, in a spin class I was talked into going to by my roommates. I take the class as a newbie, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on, but I do it all the same. My legs continue to bounce out of the feet holders and I keep pausing and going, a perfect forty-five minutes of \u201cWhen is this over?\u201d<\/i> and \u201cHow did I end up in the front<\/i>? I look like a complete fool<\/i>.\u201d<\/i> Finally it\u2019s over, and I feel the noodle legs once again, but the pain was not contained in that forty-five minutes. My legs can\u2019t move, they are so sore I limp through my week of classes, and finally they have me in an ER. That\u2019s right, like a great TLC special, Spin Class Sent Me to the ER.<\/i> I go expecting three hours of fluids, because they say I have something called Rhabdomyolysis and I am probably dehydrated. After sitting on the bed for two hours with an IV in one arm and a needle puncture in another, I feel a smile of excitement come on because I can\u2019t wait to get out of the place. But no, I get to stay overnight because the last blood test shows elevated levels. The doctor tells me this bad news and now I\u2019m scared. I call the house phone and dread the answer I\u2019ll get but, \u201cWe\u2019ll be right there Jill.\u201d I have to keep sitting like this, trapped to the IV that keeps beeping, my \u201cdancing partner.\u201d I feel fine physically, but I can\u2019t help but keep tearing.<\/p>\n

    I cry when my mom comes in, she looks so frightened for me, \u201cHow did this happen?! I don\u2019t understand.\u201d And runs over to me arms outstretched crying just as much. I keep tearing the entire night, my eyes redder and puffier each time my dancing partner and I wheel ourselves over to the bathroom. During one trip I don\u2019t sit down right away, and instead fling my fists around to no destination and think loudly, \u201cThis doesn\u2019t happen to anyone what the <\/i>fuck is happening to me.\u201d <\/i>Finally my mom looks at me and pleads, \u201cPlease talk to me Jillian,\u201d and I throw the covers over my face curl myself up into the tightest ball possible and release. I sob big heaving sobs and in between each I admit word by word I can\u2019t stay overnight and I just want to go home. I hate letting her see me like this, this is just the thing she needs, the \u201cI told you so\u201d of the century, but I can\u2019t help it. I need her, I know I do. So when she offers to stay overnight I quietly say, \u201cNo it\u2019s ok, you need your sleep,\u201d but I know she\u2019ll ignore me and answers to the nurse, \u201cCan we get another pillow please? I feel fine, but I\u2019m stuck, no way to get out of it. That night my legs start to swell, they feel worse than they ever have. My little toothpick legs swell so large they are touching each other just like they did when I was a baby, but this time I\u2019m hurt. I\u2019m crying and the ice packs aren\u2019t working, the Advil\u2019s not working and the hot packs aren\u2019t working. I keep feeling them tighten and tighten, my body squirming with an endless discomfort. Finally the doctor comes in and says, \u201cOk go give her the heavy stuff.\u201d I don\u2019t even know what it is until I\u2019m injected with a clear liquid when I hear the nurse say to my mom \u201cmorphine\u201d and then I\u2019m out.<\/p>\n

    I wake up the next morning and my IV\u2019s pinching me. I\u2019m a bit dazed, but Mom\u2019s right next to me. She\u2019s sleeping but she\u2019s doing so much more. She\u2019s just\u2026there. As always, but now she\u2019s just the only comfortable thing in this room. This room where they stick me with needles every six hours. This room where they come back with good and then terrible answers leaving me confused and disappointed. She\u2019s here like she always is, and there is nothing more comfortable then feeling her warm figure against mine in this tiny hospital bed.<\/p>\n

    Another nurse comes and she fixes the IV but a spurt of blood comes out. She sighs and starts removing the sheets so she can bring me a clean set. She lifts the covers off of my now semi-swollen legs, looks at them and says, \u201cWhat are these, mosquito bites?! Don\u2019t you know if you keep scratching them they\u2019re gonna scar?\u201d I look over at my mom and she looks right back with a look of, \u201cI told you so.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \n

    Discussion Questions<\/h3>\n