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You know, I was teased a lot as a kid on account of being spacey and disorganized. I was so firmly in my own world, I would actually walk into signs.
English teachers loved me for things like my rhyming ability (I always wrote our class' official valentine's day poems and team cheers) and bizarre, expansive essays, but social studies teachers hated that I always handed in dogeared, illegible projects with crookedly-pasted maps.
Every morning, in grade shcool, my mother would iron my uniform and brush my hair. Every night I would come home with a half-ponytail (the other half in static-y tendrils around my head) and stains on my rumpled clothes.
For some reason, I would take home all the contents of my locker every night in plastic bags, deposit them at the foot of the stairs, and not touch the contents until the next morning.
I simultaneously needed to provoke people with bizarre actions /utterances and drift off into dreaminess. It was was impossible to repress.
I wish I could have been less stressed about it and honed my natural inclination to become a punk-rock anti-establishment, scruffy teen. Man, I so wish that had been the story. But I poured over Seventeen magazine. I bought lipstick shades with names like "perfect pink". I tried so hard to be a girl.
There are so many things that I would like to tell my kid and teen self, among them:
Just because you think you have figured out the social code in one enviroment, does not mean it applies in other circles.
Sarcasm and cynicism are not sophistication. The sooner you figure it out the better.
Be a geek. It always pays off to get really good at something.
Exercise is way better than eating when looking to sublimate until boys are mature enough to get it on with.
Those music lessons could be all about becoming a rock star.
Don't try to diet.
The nice people really do win where and when it matters.
You will eventually get caught forging notes explaining your absences. I just thought I'd warn you about that one.
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9.26.2003
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