Trey Felix Figaroa

Tonight I was nosing through Facebook like I usually do while I’m waiting for the children to stop their squawking and settle down for the evening. I came across some friends-from-elementary school in my news feed and began browsing their pictures.

If you’ve ever moved as a child, you’ll acknowledge with me that those friends/classmates, in your mind’s eye, usually retain their child faces as you think back. Seeing their grown-up faces on Facebook is a little weird. I mean, they’re not supposed to look like that. They’re supposed to look like they did in the 3rd grade! It’s like all this time has passed and I know I’ve changed and I realize they should, but I'm still taken aback when I see them.

I give you that background to say that as I was browsing, a name popped into my head. Trey Felix Figaroa. I think I may have mentioned this story before, but it made me chuckle in a way that used to always make me cringe. I was 5, and dad was stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Elliott, Alex, and I were going to Covenant Presbyterian’s Christian school. I was in kindergarten and loving it. My teacher’s name was Mrs. ‘A’ (apparently, her name was long and hard so this is what we called her). I learned to read in kindergarten. Seeing Spot and seeing him run were highlights of my little life. Learning how to play tether ball, scurrying across the monkey bars with the agility of a chimp, and having my hair French braided for the first time are memories that I hold very dear.

I also remember trying to memorize the 23rd Psalm for a Reese’s peanut butter cup. It took me longer than the rest of the kids, and even at that age, I didn’t like lagging at the back of the honor roll pack. I do remember a feeling of accomplishment when I finally learned it and that spurred me toward staying closer to the head, not the rear.

And then there were my classmates. I had lots of little friends, boys and girls, and apparently I was the class flirt (hard to imagine, I know). Well, not really a flirt because I was merely super friendly, but affectionate and loving. Perhaps those are better words for a 5-year-old.

There were 2 or 3 little boys in my class who would tell me to kiss them, and, innocent that I was, I would happily, and we’d all wind up giggling and laughing.

"Kiss my nose," one would say, and I would kiss his nose.

"Kiss my cheek," another would say. And I would kiss his cheek.

You get the picture. Never anything naughty or inappropriate. We were innocent little children, and we were kissing in the after school pick-up line standing outside the building with our other classmates and teachers, so there wasn't even an opportunity to get into trouble. And I never got into trouble.

One of those boys was Trey Felix Figaroa, who was tan and had dark curly hair. That’s really all I can remember of him. One day my father (in his military uniform) came to pick me up and saw me kissing said little boy. Thankfully, he didn’t see me kissing all the other ones. Because my dad didn’t want me growing up to be a ‘loose woman’, so he said, he threatened to spank me if he ever caught me kissing another boy. I was such a sensitive little girl that his threat scared me kiss-less until I was 23 and graduated from college… before I had my first kiss, and yes, that’s the cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die honest truth.

However, if you know my dad, you’ll know that he has a big mouth. Apparently, my brothers got wind of Trey Felix Figaroa’s name and for YEARS and YEARS and YEARS they teased me. I don’t even know how they learned his middle name, but somehow those wily/pesky/rotten boys did and that name was like a curse to my ears every time I heard it, not made any better by the fact that it was so alliterative and not easy to forget. My shame and guilt (false though it was) were constant, thanks to “those mean boys.”

It’s been quite a long time since any of my brothers have brought it up, and though it was a source of torment for me, I can now browse through Facebook, remembering old friends and classmates and recall poor Trey Felix Figaroa with a smile on my face because he became one of my better ‘Dad-did-this-and-scarred-me-for-life’ stories.

For the record, my brothers and I like to “outdo” each other in telling our ‘dad’ stories when we talk on the phone… like the gallon of milk he’d take into Pizza Hut on those rare occasions we’d actually eat out and make us drink a tall glass each, driving our tiny great Aunt Sarah hundreds of miles in the car as she sat in the front seat while Mom, Austin, and I were in the back seat with Adrian lying across our laps…you know, those kinds of stories, the ones I plan to write and make my retirement off of because Dad is a character from another time and another place.

Murfreesboro, N.C., to be exact.