What a very convenient topic for a vignette: getting bitten by a rabbit on the first day of school.

I was a pig-tailed girl in a blue Cinderella costume (bad idea). When I first glimpsed the classroom, a dimly-lit square room with a worn yellow carpet, I did not notice the wide selection of illustrious picture books, nor the bins filled with costumes and stuffed animals, but the…

Rabbit-that-I-didn’t-know-was-a-rabbit sitting morosely inside a metal cage.

A lone figure with beady, unblinking eyes, floppy, gigantic ears, and a pink twitching nose stared at me. The room smelled like a mixture of freshly cut grass, vegetables, and grains. I immediately felt a strong connection with the thing and walked over to it before my mom could stop me.

As you know, little kids are not very smart. That made me a stupid little girl who was encountering a rabbit for the first time in her life. I gave it a big grin, rattled the cage a few times, and when it didn’t move, I stuck my pointer finger into the holes. Quick as a viper, the thing leaped toward me and sunk its teeth into my flesh, tearing at it. I screamed, howling, thrashing, trying to rip my finger away from the creature. Big people came running wildly, trying to pull me away. I collapsed on the ground, instinctively wiping my torn finger, now crimson red, on my beautiful outfit.

I took in the red water and sobbed hysterically. I was going to die. For sure. I’d never seen so much red in my life, never known such searing uncomfortableness. It felt like something was burning, on fire, and I was sure that any moment now, those red fire cars that blared endlessly would come. I could hear the wailing alarms, sirens sounding through my head, trumpeting from one end of my brain to the other. All I wanted to do was close my eyes, breathe, and try to go away from this place. I looked down at my red-streaked dress through a window of tears and cried harder.

To this day, I still glare at cute rabbits and blame them for what happened, though really, it was my fault. To this day, if you were to look in the back of my closet, you would find that red-streaked Cinderella dress, hung like a prize. You would see the dress that endured a child’s first feeling of pain, a child’s wonder of seeing a rabbit for the first time. To this day, the dress still resides in my room, forever a reminder that I should never stick my finger into a rabbit’s cage. Ever.