So, I don't see a lot of these character reflective things. I'll do any character, I suppose, repeats as well, and this won't be updated consistently. Whenever I get an idea, I suppose. So do add it to your alerts if you like, I will update, just not often. I'll do the character name above "dear diary" each chapter, just so you have a warning ahead of time.

Dear Diary,

I hadn't heard the term Hand-Me-Down before, not until that first day of first grade. Not from any of my friends, or a teacher, or some little book we had to read. It would have been nice if it was. Wouldn't have been as…not painful, but a bitter memory. Would have been softer. Would have made me softer, I guess. I don't have a lot of those soft memories, little conversations or riding a bike down the road, but I have a lot of harder ones. They aren't bad memories, and I didn't have a bad life. It's just…rough.

The boy I hung out with was my cousin, with hair redder than mine and eyes a forest green that never, ever shifted to any other color. He introduced me to his friends since preschool, told them I had a cooties shot and I liked cool pokémon, like tentacool, and the only thing I was girly about was that I was afraid of bugs. It took a little while, but they took me in like I was a boy. After a while, I'm pretty sure they thought I was a boy, and I'm pretty sure I thought I was too. But back then, you didn't know the real difference between the boys and girls. It came down to clothes, hair, and likes. I liked what boys liked. I had short hair like the boys. And my clothes…my clothes were a different bridge.

I found out about clothes, really found out about them, that first day of first grade. There was a little girl, a brunette, who raced up to me and pulled hard on my red suspenders. They were doubled up, then, a little loose despite the fact that we couldn't shrink them anymore if we tried. They often fell off my shoulder. I turned quickly, ruining any chance to had of snapping it when it slipped off and I worked my arm out from the hole. My fists came up in a defensive position, and waited.

"You're a girl, right?" she asked in that little kid voice.

Never mind that I had it too, it annoyed me. It always did. I could tell she had a lisp, even though she hadn't said an s yet. It probably annoyed me most of all because she was a girl. Every once in a while I would forget that I was too, but on any other occasion I simply knew that I had fought my way to hang out with the boys, to be looked at as a boy and get to play the fun games with them instead of covering my dolls in makeup. A girl had to fight her way to get in. She wasn't allowed on my side of the playground, with my boys. Funny, looking back on it, that even then I had a select few that were my boys.

I snarled, voice just about the same as it was when I first met Ash, "So what if I am? I haven't bothered you. Go play with your doll, stupid girl. You can come back when you figure out how to kick a ball. I'll kick your butt across the playground."

"Why do your clotheth look funny?" she said, a bit of an accusatory tone slipping in. If you can't understand her, don't feel too bad. I couldn't really understand her much either. "You look like a boy. We were looking at you, and Janie thed that you were a girl. I told her you couldn't be, abtholutely couldn't be becauth only big girlth and boyth wear thorths. Little girlth wear dretheth. She thed that she knowth thomeone who doeth that juth like you, so I came over to athk. Tho, you're a girl. You thouldn't wear thilly clothes."

"Why are you talking to this loony, mate?" my cousin asked, putting a calming hand on my shoulder, though that familiar Irish accent was always enough. "She can't even talk right."

"Well, not everyone can talk like you, Connor," she said, batting her eyelashes.

The most phenomenal thing to most people about Kanto is the speech. We can't add. We can't solve a riddle. Our test scores aren't the highest, our kids aren't the strongest, but when it comes to people skills we excel like nobody's business. The same drama and speech skills you would expect from a fifth grader are already present in preschool. So us Kanto kids…we can turn a phrase, I guess. That's probably why it's so much fun to argue with Ash and Brock, despite the puns and blows to the ego we may acquire, talking is just too much fun to quit. So, even the little annoying lisp girl seemed to find a way with words. Well, wordth, as she would put it.

"Go away," I said firmly. "We've got better things to do."

"Like what?" she giggled. "Getting some girl clotheth? Juth becauth you have a pretty couthin you think that you can thay whatever you want and hang out with the boyth, but you're not thuppothed too. You're thuppothed to hang out with uth. I'll let you uthe one of my ribbonth if you make your couthin play with uth."

"I don't want your stupid ribbon and Connor doesn't want to play with you!" I shouted, stamping my foot stubbornly. "Go away!"

"You're juth jealouth becauth my clotheth aren't Hand-Me-Downs," she argued. I must've dropped my angry face, or given her some hint that what she said had affected me, because she kept on. "Yeah, all your clotheth came from your thithters. That'th why they aren't pretty like mine are. I mean, have you looked at yourthelf? Dethignth from yearth ago, with a boy kind of look. That outfit ith from your thithter Violet, when thee went through her tomboy phathe. It'th okay though, becauth they were in fathion then. They aren't now."

"These aren't Violet's clothes," I argued, looking back at Connor. He wouldn't meet my eyes, staring down at the springy grass. "These are my clothes. Mommy put them in my closet, she gave them to me. And she just gave me a pokedoll set. We made pretend battles with them, Connor. Remember? You saw Mommy bring them in, in the same handful she brought in my clothes. It's my stuff. Tell her it's my stuff, and Mommy just bought it."

"Yeah, Connor. Tell her. You have Hand-Me-Downth, Mithty," she mocked. If I had known at that moment what I knew now, I would have punched her in the jaw. I would have punched her in her in the nose. I would have done anything to make that stupid lisp stop. I would have said something witty about how Hand-Me-Downs were cool and she was lame and she had a stupid lisp. But I didn't know. I was an oblivious little girl. And the other little girl took advantage of that.

"Misty," he returned softly, "let it go."

"She's wrong, Connor. These are my clothes. Mommy gave them to me. Why would she give me my sisters' clothes? They need those clothes so why-?"

"They grew out of them," he said harshly. "They got big so she gave them to you. She wanted to save money, Misty. Your sisters all love clothes, but you don't. She knew you wouldn't notice so she gave you all their clothes. They aren't yours. You're the baby, Misty. You get whatever they have left over. Nothing you get is yours! They're Gym Leaders, filthy rich, eating turkey dinner and giving you the scraps is what it comes down to."

I was speechless. I distinctly remember that girl giggling, running back to her friends to tell them exactly what happened. I remember staring at Connor and, in little kid fashion, him storming away because he just didn't know what to tell me. I stood there for a very long time, staring down at my clothes. And I remembered. I remembered seeing so many of the clothes I wore hanging in my sisters' closets or on their bodies. I remembered my sister Daisy's pokedolls, and how hers mysteriously vanished soon after I got mine, how shifty she had gotten when I asked where hers went.

I looked at the other girls, in cute little dresses, all about the same style, same cute, the only thing that really changed was the color. There was a blush to all their cheeks. The same brand of lip gloss lingered in all their purses, and they would squeal over different scents and colors.

I shouldn't have, and I shouldn't feel this way now, but somehow…somehow it felt like I could have been a part of that. I could have gotten those fancy dresses and fit in those girls, and all those years of struggling to figure out why I was so different, that didn't fall into place until third grade and I finally figured out what the phrase tomboy meant. Now, I'm glad I wasn't a part of it, but a lot of this stuff is probably just going to be looking back and wondering: what if?