Summer Before High School

Jimmy Eat World was always in my Discman. I wrote the lyrics on my arms. I wore my baby blue tee with wings on the back. The Princess Diaries trailers intrigued me. I loved the song that played. It was by Myra. It felt happy and hopeful and I liked this new Anne Hathaway chick. Fran promised not to see it until I was back from camp. I found the novel and read it hungrily in my cabin. My bunk was right next to Wizzy's. She would throw her towel into the rafters and swing on it to practice her pointe. I decorated a root beer bottle with magazine cut-outs. It was supposed to represent parts of me, and I would look at it when I was trying to fall asleep. The bold, "LET'S GO CRAZY" and the Britney Spears ad. My favorite shorts were light pink. I wore them the night I babysat for five kids. That night _____ had called my cell phone four times and hung up before finally staying on the line and asking if I wanted to see a movie. "Have you been calling and hanging up?" I asked. He responded too quickly No. But that fall in Honors Biology, by the microscopes, he told me the truth. He was already going out with ____ _______ by that time. I didn't know what to expect. I felt excited. The girls all swam at Peppermint's pool by day and watched American Pie 2 in her basement by night. We invited the boys, who would ride over on their bikes for Truth or Dare. Everyone liked everyone, but I was over the kids we knew. I was the worst student in the summer improv intensive. I never volunteered. I was too quiet to be heard. That one kid sat on my lap on the bus ride home from Second City. He said he'd get up when I had a conversation with him. I didn't. He did. No one spent any money. We were fridge-funded. I could never eat anyway because my braces hurt. I asked for red, white, and blue. There were so many graduation parties, but what did we even do at them? We were fourteen.

I don't need wings to help me fly.
Miracles happen once in a while when you believe.

Lasting Advice Comes From Funny Places

No clue why, but today I had this flashback of anxiety. Maybe because I took a mid-day nap and dreamt I was driving a van with this girl I knew when I was 15, a totally random I-was-more-friends-with-her-brother girl, and the brakes went out as we whizzed down a hill. I woke up one second from death.

Anyway, this anxiety memory: when I was a high school freshman, I was in the band room rehearsing for an Edgar Allen Poe performance piece. (Ugh. My life.) Anyway, I was in it with this guy--let's call him TR. TR was a senior and the best friend of my first boyfriend. When we started dating, TR said, "If you hurt him, I'll hurt you," which is a funny thing to say to a braces-bearing pipsqueak, but whatevs! I thought TR was soOoOoO wise. A. He wore these all-black outfits. B. He played a lead in the school musical (Thenardier in Les Mis, WORD). C. He had been dating the same girl for, like, a full year. This was foreign to me just getting off the middle school boat. Dude was the height of maturity to me.

Anyway, this day in rehearsal, we were on a break, and I walked over to a chair and saw an open notebook. I stood over it reading. I honestly didn't read a full sentence when TR came over to me, scooped it up, and said, "Don't read other people's stuff." And I said, "I didn't know whose it was...or if you minded...or..." This is the anxiety I was talking about. And he said, "It doesn't matter. It's how you get in trouble."

Looking back on TR...some things: A. He and that long-term gf broke up because he randomly got a crush on some other girl. He moped around for a good several months spitting lines like, "I don't look put together? Maybe I'M NOT." B. He wore pajamas to graduation and this t-shirt with wolves on it. Before irony was cool. C. The last night of the spring play, he ad-libbed a homophobic slur. Good. So, he wasn't actually a sage or anything. But, that advice is really good right? It's true. Reading other people's stuff, whether you know whose it is, or if it's personal...it never creates a GOOD situation, right?

And literally any time I am considering opening someone's medicine cabinet or something, I think of TR. It is amazing what we tote around and from whom we're toting, and what we've tossed into the world to be toted.