I am not a clock -- Not the right kind of human -- Maybe I am not a person -- How to say what's wrong -- The system of the world -- Countdown to Karen Silkwood -- The underside of perfect -- My real family -- Not-Melissa -- Someone kicked the Earth -- If time were a dog -- Oh how we glowed -- Scapegoat -- Frankie Bird -- Jinx -- Yes, no, maybe, I don't know -- Listen carefully and say exactly what I say -- Normal-sized -- A beautiful, gorgeous life -- A stay-behind kid -- The bright side -- The drainpipe man -- A word never means only one thing -- A sense of rightness -- Hunky dory -- My life stained the world -- I'm the test to solve -- Everywhere I look, families -- Anarchy -- When I turn eighteen -- What if I give birth to myself? -- Who doesn't want to be in a play? -- One right way to be a person -- Homeless -- I am a pinball machine -- The system is the problem -- The dread, the relief -- Waiting to move on -- The body -- Waited my whole life to be normal -- Forever Mama -- Take care of the animals -- Certainty -- To be the same.
Summary:
The ordinary world never made sense to Amanda, who grew up certain her friends and family would die or disappear if she quit watching them, compulsively treating every parting as a final good-bye. Shuttled between divorced parents, from a barefoot bohemian existence in Greenwich Village to a sanitized, stricter world uptown, this smart, sensitive little girl experienced life through the distorting lens of an undiagnosed panic disorder. Her darkly funny memoir is at once a love letter to 1970-80s New York City, a coming-of-age story of an anxious, unusually perceptive child, and a window into adult life and relationships lived on the razor's edge of panic.
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