One school year, in the 3rd grade, my teacher wanted me to try out 5th grade math. Which meant going to the 5th grade classroom for the math lesson, it was intimidating. These kids looked way bigger than me. The classroom had individual desks clumped into groups, in total 4 groups of 5 desks. However, I noticed a singular desk up against the wall. There was a girl at the pencil sharpening station with light brown wavy hair. She looked annoyed and kept huffing and puffing really loudly. She was dragging her feet back to her desk and decided to let out a loud moan. She was the occupier of the desk in solitary confinement. She was very pretty and looked like she knew something we all didn’t. During the lesson she would blurt out random song lyrics. The class would chuckle, my eyes would just wander over to her, I was so fascinated by this girl. The teacher would say “That’s enough Vada, (Veida) let’s continue solving these problems”. This happened a few more times, it was clear Vada was working the crowd. Shortly after, another 5th grade teacher came to the door to ask our teacher a question. Our teacher stopped our lesson and went to the door to address her colleague. Vada takes this opportunity and makes a break for it!!! She runs over to my table group, proceeds to climb ON OUR DESKS and starts loudly singing “Papa don’t preach I’m in trouble deep papa don’t preach, I’ve been losing sleep, but I made up my mind, I’m keeping my baby, hm I’m gonna keep my baby, hmmmmmmm” while rolling around and crawling on all fours looking at us and sticking out her tongue, licking her lips. She was performing her own half-time show! My 8 year old self couldn’t believe what was happening, and I had already seen some crazy shit in my short little life… by then I had witnessed an exorcism, survived a house fire, weaseled my way out of grips of an induced episode of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and had been abducted from my front yard. Those are tales for another time. The teacher jerks away from the door and grabs Vada and firmly leads her back to her desk. She plops down in her chair and sighs even louder than before. The teacher picks up where she left off on the chalkboard. When the classroom seems to be back under control, Vada gets up again, she throws herself on the carpeted floor and starts singing “ like a virgin touched for the very first tiiiiiiiime!!!!!!!!” and touching herself on her chest and between her legs. The classroom is disrupted again. The teacher is clearly annoyed. I knew right then that Vada was a force of nature. She didn’t care about authority, she lived by her own feral ways. I would think about this moment 3 decades later! I knew even then that if I ever procreated that I would name my daughter Vada. When I was first expecting, I told Sam, my husband, “If it is a girl, her name will be Vada!” he responded with “oh yeah that’s awesome, like The Vedas” Yet, as fate would have it, I ended up with two sons. Today, I actually looked up what Vada means, it gave me chills: “to wade; to walk through (deep) water · (figuratively) to walk through anything which hampers one’s progress’ ‘ In Italian it means “to see”. In Aragonese it means “to strike”. This young lady was perfectly named.