the wrong side of the bed
Saturday, September 29, 2007
it is not like years ago
i don't know for sure what made me think of these two and a half things
1. the boy i had a crush on in high school sang "nightswimming" during a choir concert. he would laugh when i was sarcastic even though the other boys were determined that girls were not funny. i cannot tell you how many times i listened to that song.
2. the same kids were almost always in my classes, thanks to tracking, so i am not sure how this happened, but it happened in eighth grade. i'm kind of remembering that we did some kind of class jumbling thing for a few weeks. we were working on group projects for our social studies or history or whatever class. in my group there was a kinda goth, kinda skater boy in my group, and i did not know him at all. there was also a girl named melody and a kid of some sort who i cannot remember.
i knew melody* because she had the locker next to mine in gym. she wore matching bras and underwear. they were always satin and dark colors like burgundy and forest green. she also wore thigh high stockings with garters. it was very hard not to watch her changing. this was during the same period of time that i would change clothes without ever actually fully undressing. so, yeah, i remember melody.
the kinda goth, kinda skater boy was kind of dismissive of me because i was such a dorky loser. from about 6th grade through my first year of college i wore the baggiest clothes that i could find in as many layers as i could tolerate. thank the heavens for grunge or high school would have been so unbearable as to have done me in. melody was nice to me because she knew me from gym, but the boy acted like i wasn't there and didn't really care about my input. without any contribution (or suggestion, because i was very shy) we ended up naming our country after the album green. after that we made ecology a big theme for our country.
do you remember those binders that had the extra, flexible plastic layer so that you could slip photos our paper into the outside? am i describing that well? at my school mostly only girls had them, but this goth skater kid had one. there was a picture of a girl that i knew and it turned out was his girlfriend. we had a very awkward conversation establishing how i knew her. my sister was briefly hospitalized for depression when she was in high school.** all of the kids and their families had a therapy session together once while my sister was there, during which his girlfriend confessed to her mother that she drank "a beer." according to my sister, she did a lot more than that, but, seriously, you don't end up in some kind of weirdo psychiatric treatmenty kinda place for being 13 and drinking one beer.
after he found out about my sister, i was suddenly much cooler.
1/2. there was a statue in my hometown that was supposed to be someone standing on the shoulder of a giant, but it was really more of a statue of a child coming out of the armpit of a man with his arms outstretched in the air. when we were driving around, as teenagers do, my friend clare and i would sometimes sing the relevant bit of the song "king of birds." we knew, don't worry, that is not the origin of the saying.
* i just tried to google melody by what i remember her first and last name to me. i'm not finding her. maybe her name wasn't melody... i did have a my little pony with that name, so maybe i am getting them confused.
** she didn't really need to be hospitalized. about a year later, there was a big scandal about those kinds of hospitals engaging in scams to get money from insurance companies by accepting patients that were not actually in need of care. whatever. it is still a good story, i guess. an even better part of the story is that my sister, while initially delighted to be there eventually exploded during family therapy saying, "it's dorotha's fault i'm here! dorotha's the one who should be here!"
1. the boy i had a crush on in high school sang "nightswimming" during a choir concert. he would laugh when i was sarcastic even though the other boys were determined that girls were not funny. i cannot tell you how many times i listened to that song.
2. the same kids were almost always in my classes, thanks to tracking, so i am not sure how this happened, but it happened in eighth grade. i'm kind of remembering that we did some kind of class jumbling thing for a few weeks. we were working on group projects for our social studies or history or whatever class. in my group there was a kinda goth, kinda skater boy in my group, and i did not know him at all. there was also a girl named melody and a kid of some sort who i cannot remember.
i knew melody* because she had the locker next to mine in gym. she wore matching bras and underwear. they were always satin and dark colors like burgundy and forest green. she also wore thigh high stockings with garters. it was very hard not to watch her changing. this was during the same period of time that i would change clothes without ever actually fully undressing. so, yeah, i remember melody.
the kinda goth, kinda skater boy was kind of dismissive of me because i was such a dorky loser. from about 6th grade through my first year of college i wore the baggiest clothes that i could find in as many layers as i could tolerate. thank the heavens for grunge or high school would have been so unbearable as to have done me in. melody was nice to me because she knew me from gym, but the boy acted like i wasn't there and didn't really care about my input. without any contribution (or suggestion, because i was very shy) we ended up naming our country after the album green. after that we made ecology a big theme for our country.
do you remember those binders that had the extra, flexible plastic layer so that you could slip photos our paper into the outside? am i describing that well? at my school mostly only girls had them, but this goth skater kid had one. there was a picture of a girl that i knew and it turned out was his girlfriend. we had a very awkward conversation establishing how i knew her. my sister was briefly hospitalized for depression when she was in high school.** all of the kids and their families had a therapy session together once while my sister was there, during which his girlfriend confessed to her mother that she drank "a beer." according to my sister, she did a lot more than that, but, seriously, you don't end up in some kind of weirdo psychiatric treatmenty kinda place for being 13 and drinking one beer.
after he found out about my sister, i was suddenly much cooler.
1/2. there was a statue in my hometown that was supposed to be someone standing on the shoulder of a giant, but it was really more of a statue of a child coming out of the armpit of a man with his arms outstretched in the air. when we were driving around, as teenagers do, my friend clare and i would sometimes sing the relevant bit of the song "king of birds." we knew, don't worry, that is not the origin of the saying.
* i just tried to google melody by what i remember her first and last name to me. i'm not finding her. maybe her name wasn't melody... i did have a my little pony with that name, so maybe i am getting them confused.
** she didn't really need to be hospitalized. about a year later, there was a big scandal about those kinds of hospitals engaging in scams to get money from insurance companies by accepting patients that were not actually in need of care. whatever. it is still a good story, i guess. an even better part of the story is that my sister, while initially delighted to be there eventually exploded during family therapy saying, "it's dorotha's fault i'm here! dorotha's the one who should be here!"
5:10 PM
