Bonkers

Bonkers

By Kami Bryant

When I was five years old, living in Southern California in East L.A., I had a friend named Deanna who had an older sister Gina who was ten years old. When I was five, a ten year old seemed very worldly and wise.

Gina and Deanna’s mother worked in a candy factory that made Bonkers and so she would bring home huge bags of the candy which she kept in a 10 pound container in the kitchen. This was extremely cool to my five year old self.

Bonkers was a 1980’s candy that is discontinued now. I have tried searching for it everywhere to no avail. I really loved that candy. It was a soft fruit chew candy pressed into a rectangular shape with a different color and flavor square in the center.

I used to hang out at Deanna’s place a lot and go in to the kitchen and grab a handful of Bonkers candy when no one was watching.

Deanna, Gina and I all took the same ballet class. One day I had two recitals, a ballet recital and then a piano recital right after. It is funny looking back at the home movies that I still have of my childhood self. Back in the 80’s video cameras were huge and had a compartment for a full VHS tape on the side. I still have those VHS tapes but I no longer even have a VCR to watch them.

I remember the day of the recital. The three of us are painted like showgirls wearing flower wreath headdresses on our heads, hot pink leotards and hot pink ballet shoes. We are all very excited. Our routine was skipping around on the stage to a piece from the Nutcracker Suite and is pretty ridiculous to watch. At the middle of our routine, we are skipping around in a circle dutifully following the leader. After going around and around in circles in the center of the stage after two rotations we were supposed to cross in the center in a perfect line and then finish in a plie. But the leader who was supposed to lead the group into crossing into an infinity symbol didn’t show up that day because she was sick, so we are going around and around in a circle for five minutes over and over with no leader to get us to cross. You can see Gina, the ten-year-old smarter and worldly one start to stumble and mumble, “No, we are supposed to cross.” But we are all obediently following the leader and skipping around in a circle over and over and over. We probably would have continued in that fashion forever until we collapsed in exhaustion. Finally, our ballet teacher pulled us back stage and decided to give someone else the leader position, Gina as the elder was elected to lead us into a perfect infinity symbol and we ended our recital to applause. I never took ballet again after that day.

The home movie continues with my mother pulling off my leotard and slipping a yellow dress over my head for my next recital. There I am playing Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano badly. I am stubbornly plinking away over and over because I am missing a key and messing up. Every time I mess up I start over again and again. My piano teacher comes over to help me and I shake her off stubbornly insisting that I figure it out myself. This continues for about ten minutes as everyone in the audience is forced to watch my tortuous rendition of the nursery rhyme. I finally figure out what I am doing wrong and finish and get up, grab my sheet music and leave to thunderous applause, the audience glad that the torture is finally over. I never played the piano again after that.

Piano and ballet recitals seem now like rites of passage for little girls who are forced to perform something that they don’t really enjoy. All I really wanted to do was sit and eat sweet, chewy artificially flavored candy. That, was truly the selling point for going over to Deanna and Gina’s house.