Peace, Love, Happiness, Whatever

I apologize for the long lapse between posts - I've been going to a lot of doctor appointments for myself and my cat, who is trying really hard to die on me as far as his blood work is concerned, but seems mostly like his happy-go-lucky-please-let-me-outside-now self, so I'm hoping the blood workup is a dirty lie and he turns out triumphant. Maybe he was bit by a radioactive spider or something and will become a SUPERCAT.

This note is from a girl named Chelsea, who was a friend from the second session of a summer day camp between 6th & 7th grade to the end of the summer between 6th & 7th grade. It wasn’t more than six weeks, but I’m pretty sure she thought we’d be friends forever. It was the kind of friendship that starts when one of you (me) says something awkward and nerdy while you’re tie-dying t-shirts or writing poems about nature and 99% of the class thinks you’re “weird” (to be called weird when you’re 12 might as well be the kiss of death, but as I’d been ‘weird’ forever, I was used to it, and used to saying things aloud anyway) but one other girl in the class – one, if you’re lucky! – thinks you’re her kindred spirit immediately and to demonstrate overwhelming relief that there is one other person in the room that could “get” her, she shares her coveted Gardetto’s at lunch, which totally suckered me in. I mean, come on. Mini breadsticks, rye crackers AND pretzels? Sign me up!

This is the only note I have from her, which makes me think that I either a) really did not get the note she asks about or b) I DID get the note but threw it away in an effort to destroy evidence that I got the letter and didn’t write back, as I’m sure it also commanded “AND WRITE BACK”… I’m sure I would’ve put the note on my bulletin board and would have seen it staring at me, making me feel guiltier and guiltier every day I didn’t WRITE BACK, but feeling really contrary about it, because I don’t like it when anyone tells me what to do, and Chelsea didn’t scare me in the least.

B sounds more like me.

Anyway, unlike Chelsea, I was probably looking forward to school, because my summers were difficult. School meant socializing with friends and being busy with lots of after-school activities like girl scouts and chess club and dance and theater; the summer meant endless amounts of chores when I wasn’t at day camp (There was no rhyme or reason to themes of these camps, either. I don’t know who picked what, but I’ve been to French camp, writing camp, math camp, swimming camp… you name it, I was signed up for it). But day camp is just that – a day, or more likely, half-a-day – which meant hours upon hours of precious daylight to clean the bathroom, dust every surface in the house, clean my room, clean my room again because it wasn’t good enough the first time, wash dishes, pull weeds, mow the lawn… I digress. I’m just saying, my idea of summer wasn’t romantic visions of lounging around in the sun for three months, playing with my friends and hanging out at the ‘ol swimmin’ hole, eating ice cream… none of those idyllic things. I just imagined a long line of brooms coming at me menacingly, like in Fantasia.

Chelsea was the first person to write a postscript to me like that – the symbols and the words “Peace Love Happiness Friendship Harmony”. I’m glad she spelled them out (I now realize that was the custom, but then I felt relief) because I would have otherwise thought it was some really cool code she’d come up with that I had to figure out. I would have probably torn the letter apart, looking for clues to the symbols, trying to rise to the challenge, because I always rise to challenges; and honestly, that could have easily been a decisive end to our friendship because how uncool is it to have a dorky, intense response (imagine I wrote a banal, casual letter but with a PS written in the secret code I think she’s written but that she doesn’t understand) to something that everybody knows is just a simple “cool” thing to write at the end of a letter?

Surviving middle school is about keeping up with what everybody else knows - or at least that’s what I tried to do, and generally failed. It felt like I was always trying to keep up with the biological phenomena that is schooling fish; they turn and move with a particular groupthink that directs their movements and allows the majority of them to survive, but if you don't join up you don't know what music to listen to or what TV to watch or what shoes to wear.

Our friendship failed because I didn’t, in the end, write back, and we never made arrangements to visit one another. At least, I don’t remember writing back – and it’s possible she ended up moving away, or I lost her address – but mostly I think I didn’t care. Chelsea had been a good comrade at day camp, but she wasn't in my immediate frame of reference and that made it hard for me to keep up my end. Plus I'm sure this letter would have been followed by other boring letters and eventually I would have run out of things to say. While I definitely had appreciated her appreciation for my weirdness, Chelsea wasn't that weird; I felt a little betrayed that she wasn't really a kindred spirit - she knew things like "Peace Love Happiness Friendship Harmony". She could swim with the school a little more easily.

PS - Don't you think it's weird "Friendship" is a star? Discuss!

I know you have been violent to others. Like me.

I know this note reads like the stream-of-consciousness of a crazy person, but it is a direct response to a conversation Chris and I had in Mr. Heinecke's 8th grade English class. I can't fully explain the possum or kangaroo references, but I was probably thinking of ways to use up my excess energy - due to the serious caffeine addiction I had.

Mr. Heinecke rarely called me by my first or last name. He usually called on me by saying "Yes Ma'am," because I was a snobby know-it-all. When he assigned writing a response to the movie "Black Sheep" I refused, citing the film "immature" and "stupid" and while the rest of the class was excited to spend the day watching the movie, I actually moved my desk into the hall and worked on my essay alone. I'd decided to write on the BBC version of Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" which I'd taped off of PBS; I was also quite fond of the thesaurus:

"Mrs. Danvers was insanely rancorous with Mrs. De Winter. She was upset that Mrs. De Winter had moved into Manderly, the manor where the story primarily took place and thought that she did not know how a household should be run. She was also irate that Mrs. De Winter was slowly taking over Rebecca's spot in the household. She was enraged and resentful of the fact that Mr. De Winter had married very soon after Rebecca's death, and was embittered that the new Mrs. De Winter was so young and did not come from a wealthy family. Mrs. Danvers was acrimonious and resentful of Mrs. De Winter."

I don't know how many more ways a 13-year-old girl can come up with to say "angry" but it's likely I knew them all; I was pretty angry back then. I was transitioning to new friends after a weird year in a new school district, not sleeping much (see caffeine addiction mentioned above), my sister (who I was apparently mean to - sorry about that) was also just moving into her teenage years, and though I didn't know it at the time, my mom was starting to get really sick.

I also had a lot of insecurity about how smart I was. The "West" that Chris asks about beating was the rival junior high in our school district, which seemed to always edge us out in Knowledge Masters, a competition like Quiz Bowl. West had a system that involved tryouts and alternates for their team, like football, and designated "captains" for every subject. Our school's team was hand-picked by the directors of our gifted program, who had already expressed their ambiguity about my participation. I desperately wanted to be on the team, but when the list of names was posted, mine wasn't there.

I was eventually asked to join the team a few weeks later when another member had too many extra-curricular activities and resigned. He suggested me as a replacement, and when friends of mine on the team got behind the idea, the directors did too - but I never forgot I was second (or third or fourth) choice. I was on the junior high team for two years and the high school team for one before I was asked to co-captain the high school team my junior and senior years, and I have never felt the need to rub something in someones face as badly as I did that day. It took every ounce of maturity I had to not run across the football field, get a visitor's badge, burst into the gifted offices and announce loudly, that I, the fourth-choice girl, was going to captain a team, so they could SUCK IT.

Of course, being on a team and being a captain are really different, which took a while to learn. Since my junior high didn't have "captains", just the directors of the program, and was more of a hodge-podge, I think I can understand why I wasn't the first choice to be on the team. Maybe. Let's just say I'll never forgive them (I'm not perfect!), but can understand.

When building a KM team, it's very important to get the right balance - some energetic kids, some calm kids, kids who are strong in different areas. I knew I was very strong in literature and logical reasoning, but was also a bit of a mess. I'm sure the violence Chris refers to in his letter was, on one hand, the fact that I'd hit him in the arm a lot when he annoyed me, but on the other hand my general state: Caffeine-induced mania, lack of sleep, a good amount of anger and snobbishness - not exactly the description of a good team player, no matter how smart you are.

"Jade" the Possum

I just wanted to give you guys (all 6 of you) a teaser for next week: The story behind this extremely flattering portrait of me in 8th grade as a possum... I think those are supposed to be my feet, not some sort of butterfly-shaped organ attached to my lower half.

I know, the resemblance is striking.

Hope Your Robot Brings You an A

Anyone who knows me knows I love robots. I have a large blue robot that was given to me in college – a good friend made it for me in his lab (he was an aeronautical and astronomical PhD student) out of wood and hardware, and brought it by the library where I worked as surprise. The best feature he has is poseable eyebrows. Hilarious! I also have little sticky robots on my desk at work - they make for great lunchtime photo sessions behind a backdrop of copier paper (I work hard, I promise).

I'm not sure what robot my mom is referring to in this note - one of many she slipped in with my lunch throughout my childhood - but this was written to me in the first few days of 6th grade, so obviously my love is over a decade old.

With most of my elementary school classmates, we’d just “graduated” from 5^th grade and moved over to one of the school district’s middle schools. This was the first time we had more than one class in English; our elementary school had been an immersion school, but the middle school was a sort of hybrid system that incorporated multiple elementary schools, so half our day was in English with other kids (gym, art, math, English), the other half in Spanish with (social studies, science, Spanish). It was also pretty large in comparison, and I remember getting lost on more than one occasion, but did eventually figure it out, I guess. I mean, I’m not there now, so I think I did OK.

And I’m not sure why my mom thought Kelly would figure out what I was going to give her for her 12^th birthday. Was I really bad at keeping secrets then? Had I told our other best friends, Kelsey and Christy? I was probably worrying unnecessarily, which is still one of my favorite pastimes. Things I am unnecessarily worried about right now:

n Crocodiles (is there a chance they could come to the Pacific Northwest? Will I need to move? Crocodiles can track you.)

n Alligators (see Crocodiles, but without the tracking part. They don’t/can’t/aren’t willing to do that. I appreciate their laziness.)

n Falling off my bike (I am not currently on a bike, but I was this morning. I was worried then too, but it was more appropriate.)

I rotate worries/fears pretty often so it never gets boring, though Crocodiles are almost always on the list. Unless I’m at home and then the fear of burglary usually edges them out, because I haven’t heard of crocodiles in the PNW yet, so I don’t worry them being in my kitchen like that one woman in Florida who was nearly eaten.*

*Ok, she wasn't nearly eaten. But still. Could have been.

UPDATE: My mom says I was worried about Kelly finding out about the gift because I HAD told Kelsey and Christy and was concerned they'd tell. Huh, the things you find out when you share your blog with your mom.

First Boyfriend, First Post

Tim C. was the first boy to ask me out. It happened at breakfast during Environmental Camp - an educational week of "tracking" animals in the woods, looking at poop, cross-country skiing, and dog sledding - and it was pretty awesome. Tim's best friend Chris, who had long hair and wore a lot of black, came up as I was just taking a sip of juice and dropped the note in my lap. My eyes followed him back to his seat before opening the note, and he tried to keep me from seeing Tim's red face pressed between his arms on the table. I read it quickly, stuffed it into my pocket, and tried to ignore the teasing that promptly ensued from my table.

It took me a while to write Tim back. I couldn't understand why he liked me - the only time he saw me was in our 6th period math class, which I hated and probably scowled through the entire time. I also looked awful, as I had gym class 6th period on the opposite side of the campus, and had to sprint to get changed and to class on time.

I slept with the note under my pillow that night at camp and a few days later, the last day of camp (obviously avoiding anywhere he or Chris could be during that time - I think I had a sandwich in a bathroom at some point), drafted a response which basically said, "Sure." We had a sweet, if short relationship. We went to one junior-high dance together where he bought me punch, I "guest starred" on the cable access television show he and Chris had until a particularly rambunctious use of the air horn resulted in my storming off the set, and I doubt we did more than hold hands, but I have nice memories of it all.

I kept the note all these years because it WAS the first time I'd been asked out (ironically, amongst my friends I was the first girl to be asked out, the first girl to have a boyfriend, and the first girl to have an older boyfriend but now most of them are engaged or married and I'm not even dating anybody) and I loved how practical ("I'm not going to say mushy stuff") and proactive ("let's start with this!") it was.

I've recently found others, all dating from 1994 - 2001 or so, and have started to go through them. They are often sweet and hilarious - sometimes a little troubling and sad - but they struck me as being quite accurate snapshots of who I was then, and probably of how a lot of other people were too, and I thought it'd be interesting to share. So in the words of Tim C. - let's start with this!