Square Peg

In the second grade you usually can't understand the importance of shapes in relation to their intended purpose… not right away, anyhow. I remember game day with significance now at this juncture in my life, and find myself inclined to act upon a habit that formed in childhood, shaping the outcome of my choices ever since.

In the second grade, Ms. “Jones” let the children choose whatever game they wanted to play on Tuesdays. The way it worked was, you signed up when you came in on Monday morning for the game you wanted to play, and then the first one to get to the game would play it on game day. There were three lines on the sign-up sheet for each game and a 15-minute time limit for each.

My mother was a kind, intelligent and well-intended parent but she had a habit of making me late to school almost every single day. I usually didn't get to school in time and by the time I did arrive on Mondays, the pickings on the games were slim.

I held a particular fascination for the peg game. This was a small and colorful wooden table with various shaped holes into which, one would put matching shaped wooden pegs: stars for stars, triangles for triangles, etc. It was well-made and had more than just the regular shapes, (triangle, square, circle, etc.). The blocks were chunky and colorful for small hands and eyes to build coordination and the table was just the right size for a second-grader. I haven't seen one like it since then.

A little boy named “Danny” was in this class, who made no end of torturing me every chance he got. He knew my appreciation for the order that is established by placing those pegs “just so”, and because of it, always put in a bid ahead of mine to play with the pegboard. I played with it three times in the first month of school, but that was it for a while. We had been in school together until the month of December in fact, before I was allowed to play with the peg game again after that.

I sat down and evaluated each little hole and its relative shape, then ordered the blocks accordingly. I then proceeded to place the pegs into the corresponding holes with mounting interest as I neared the end. The last peg on the board was a square. (It could have been the first peg on the board too, depending on the way you started. I started like I read, from left to right, top to bottom, but some children started with the square peg and moved upward: like Danny did.)

The first shape on the board didn’t have a peg either. It was the star shape. The star shaped piece had been missing from the beginning of the school year, so finding that hole empty was no deal breaker for me. The square peg however, had repeatedly been where it was supposed to be and now was missing, putting me in a conundrum.

Thinking someone had misplaced the peg; I pushed my seat back, stood up and began searching for the square peg. At every turn, it eluded me, neither on the floor under or around the table, not in the toy box or the crayon caddies.

Returning to my seat, I began looking at that square hole with serious confusion. I had waited all this time to play the peg game and had been cut short by the absence of the square piece, the missing link to my little puzzle.

In my peripheral vision, Danny made an appearance, holding the square shaped peg in his vile little hands. He taunted me with it, made fun of me for not having that special little piece of the puzzle, and stuck his tongue out at me. I leapt from my seat and tried to wrench the peg from him.

Ms. Jones intervened on Danny’s behalf and made me sit on the “naughty” stool in the corner, with a clear view of this boy as he randomly undid all of my hard work.

Tears streamed over my cheeks as I watched all my quiet contemplation and order disappearing at the hands of a madman. Ms. Jones realized that the perplexity of shame might be more than I could bear and let me leave my seat with the promise that I wouldn’t bother or hurt Danny. I promised, and I never break a promise.

I stood by the table however with perverse desperation to see how it would come out. At the end of it all, the two holes empty and but one peg to fill it, Danny began cramming the square peg into the star-shaped hole, despite the fact that it would in no way fit.

Tapping the boy on the shoulder, thinking that surely he must be as dense as a bag of concrete, I explained the importance of putting the correct peg into the right hole, and that if he would but try the square orifice, he might actually get the thing to fit.

In response he told me to shut up, reached into the toy toolbox that Ms. Jones had provided for the boys to play with, and withdrew a little wooden mallet. He then proceeded to pound the square peg into the star-shaped hole with such relentless intent, that I hold no doubt he’d have scared the devil himself that day. He shredded the sides of both the peg and the hole, but he managed to cram that square peg where it didn’t belong all the same.

Because the maniacal force of a seven-year-old brat had slammed the two wrong things together, they were seemingly joined there for eternity. When he left the table, pulling up his pants and casting me a smug little smile as he left, I tried pushing the peg through from the top and the bottom. I tried tapping against it with a toy hammer but realized at the end of a very stressful playtime that there wasn’t anything I could do on my own to fix this mess.

So I showed it to Ms. Jones, thinking surely she would understand my dilemma and reprimand the culprit for his dastardly deed. That’s not exactly how it came out, however.

She commended Danny on his creative efforts but assured him that these two things didn’t go together. She then called the janitor and he drilled a hole between the peg and the board, causing the square shaped peg to slip right through.

It’s probably a good thing that the star-shaped wedge was missing though, because there was little hope of it ever fitting into the pegboard again. And I don't know why, but standing there staring at that misshapen orifice made me sad. The sides of the star-shaped hole were frayed and uneven from both the force of the peg and hammer, and from “Mr. Janitor’s” drill. Wildly enough, the square peg still managed to stay in the square hole when inserted properly.

Now even at this age, I ram square pegs into star-shaped holes on regular occasion.

Twice divorced and on the other side of failed marriages and other failed relationships, I have learned that while I personally think of relationships as a union of two like-shapes, it is very often a deception, conjured by a spouse or partner with a very big mallet, and an even bigger desire to undo every wonderful thing I’d hoped to accomplish with them.

I realize now that though in the beginning I considered some of these people to be a star, they were clearly squares.

I dated after my divorces for a little while, still seeing myself as the little girl pushing the seat away from the table, actively searching for the right peg to fill the right void and every time, haunted by the image of little Danny “What’s-his-name”, taunting me with that square-shaped-peg.

I decided to stop pushing the square pegs into places they will never fit, and just be a star that might or might not have a piece missing: because in my mind, being a star with a missing piece is still more beautiful than being a whole square.