Standing at a mere 3 ft 5 inches, 4 year old me was hardly a menacing sight. My small frame, chubby hands, and protruding stomach did little to encourage my cruelty, and my slightly-too-short bangs paired with my deceitful smile did little to hint at it. But none of that stopped me; my exterior may have incited assumptions regarding my ability to impose, but it certainly did not dictate my status among my peers. The playground was my kingdom all the same. I trudged around with abnormally heavy steps, establishing myself as a superior figure to the insolent rascals beneath me. I had a specific set of rules, and all who challenged them would face the consequences; none could escape my wrath.

As the queen, I reigned. The seesaw my horse, the slide my bed, the swing my throne. The babies and preteens alike cowered under my sovereignty and called me their ruler. And as the crown-holder, I -like most respectable women do- held my family, predominantly my brother, at a degree of vital importance. Despite acting simultaneously as my loyal servant and dependent partner in crime, my brother, Lucas, has always been vastly different than me. And at the ripe ages of 4 and 7, the personality gap was even wider. While I was characterized by violence, bad temper, and intolerance, my brother, conversely, was characterized by his patience, good nature, and positivity. His frailness bestowed upon me a sense of responsibility for his well-being, and so, at any sign of disrespect towards my brother, I was forced to retaliate.

It was a fine Sunday morning, the best park-going day of the week, when I entered the playground and felt a sense of unease. Something was wrong. As I approached him, my brother looked gloomily in the distance. I demanded him to tell me what was wrong, and my brother simply nodded in the direction of the hands of a certain Mike Schusterman, and explained that the boy had taken a toy of his. I glared at the curly haired brat, contemplating my next move, and took it upon myself to seek the revenge that I knew my brother wouldn’t. Although he may not have realized the severity of his actions while he was committing them, Schusterman signed his metaphorical death sentence the minute his blistered fingers grazed the tip of the plastic siren on my brother’s favorite HotWheels ambulance.

It didn’t take long for me to decide that it was my duty, as the queen, to re-establish the balance of the playground, to solidify its social structure, to remind the people of the rules they were to comply with. I stood, and with the longest strides my elfin legs could muster, I marched over to the 5-year-old perpetrator. I glowered threateningly into his beady eyes as I lowered my plump body onto my right knee. The eye contact did not break until I pushed his face so far into the sand that he had no choice but to shut his eyes resignedly. I rose, returned to where my brother was seated, and triumphantly handed him the ambulance I had retrieved from curly boy. He took the ambulance and shook his head.

“You shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t nice or fair. I’m going to give it back.”
He stood, slowly made his way over to Schusterman, sat down beside him, and handed him the ambulance.

I froze, confused. “It wasn’t nice”. Nice? What a strange concept. Being nice to those who were anything but to us. “Interesting”, I thought. Maybe total control wasn’t the best way to foster relationships, and maybe being ‘nice’ wasn’t all that bad. Maybe having subjects and servants wasn’t the most important thing. And, maybe, just maybe, being queen wasn’t the ultimate goal.