Celery's daughter

My father was one of the teachers in town, so everyone knew us as the “teacher’s kids”, which wasn’t really what we wanted to be. Students don’t like teachers, so as the teacher’s daughters, I was off to a bad start. On top of that, my parents were in the green party, always rode around town on bicycles, had a vegetable garden my father would work in after school and we didn’t eat any meat. Nevertheless, I didn’t understand why some of the boys were making me responsible for my family being a bit different. I desperately wanted to be like everyone else but saw my chances fading when they started to call my father “celery” and I became celery’s daughter. I never knew what to say and would usually just pretend I didn’t hear them when they called me names as I walked past. But I started being really nervous about walking past the big boys that I usually took a detour whenever I saw a few of them standing together.

One day, I complained to my mother about it and she told me to be proud of who I was and hold my head high when I walk past them. I thought it was easy for her to say that but I tried it anyway. After a few days, I felt as if it had started to work and I felt a bit less scared about walking past the big boys. But the same day, my brother came home and said he heard they were calling me arrogant and that obviously I thought I was something better. So I took my head down again and decided life was unfair.