At the end of my fifth-grade year, our teacher decided we would produce and star in a Hawaiian pageant. My mom brought home a length of white satin cloth and one large safety pin that would serve as my costume as the Queen of Hawaii. The night of the pageant, it felt strange to be in my classroom, the windows framing a moon instead of sunshine. Even stranger were all the girls changing their clothes while standing among our school desks. With just a drape of shiny cloth swirling across my body, held together with one safety-pin, I was naked except for my polka-dot underwear. For the first time in my pre-pubescent life, I started to sweat.

All the girls were tightly wrapped in their cloth-colored sarongs, each representing a different island in the Hawaiian chain. The cloth was so tight and so precariously attached to our bodies, that we were barely able to move our legs. The tallest girl named Donna, had it the easiest. She was the only fifth grade girl to have C cups, or any cups for that matter, so her cloth hung further and more loosely from her body, allowing her the ability to stride, whereas the rest of us looked like tottering, colorful drink straws.

I remember walking down the center aisle of the multi-purpose room, parents and kids rustling in the squeaky, folding chairs. Walking beside me was a kid named Mark, a curly blond-headed King of Hawaii. We made sure to acutely ignore each other each step of the way. We made it to the stage, and I, the Queen, somehow managed to bend my stiff, quivering sweat-soaked body onto the seat of my “throne.”

Together the eight princesses performed their hula dance while in my chest, my heart was performing a Tahitian fire dance. I tried to sit still not taxing the satin cloth. It was terrifying to know that a single safety pin was the lonely the barrier between modesty and humiliation.

But before long, I heard the overtures of the song for my solo hula dance. I planted my bare feet and stood up. The pin held. I approached center stage and began to dance just as I had been practicing. The pin held. I reached my arms to the heavens, my hands undulating, my hips rocking back and forth. And that gigantic safety pin stayed put. I could see that my hands and fingers were shaking, as if I was suffering from fever chills, but in a weird way, I thought the shaking made me look grown-up.

The dance ended and the audience clapped. But for me, the most celebrated performer of the evening was the safety pin.