In 1976, the year we were supposed to be learning the metric system, we fell in love with Katy Muldoon. We were in the sixth grade, and Katy sat at the front of our math class, raising her hand for every question, as though all of the answers to all of the problems were merely floating in front of her eyes.
We loved her when she wore a poncho, which was an exotic thing to wear in Chicago. We loved her when she came to school with her long hair chopped short like the figure skater Dorothy Hamill’s. We loved her when she began crying in the middle of class one day for no reason that we could see. We loved the small scar on her forehead, just above the eyebrow, from the time she had fallen off the slide in third grade, and we loved how the scar turned purple after she ran the fifty-yard dash in gym class. We loved her when she smiled at us and when she ignored us. It didn’t matter what she wore or did; we loved her regardless.
