a persons age - Nicole Tillbrook - 15
a specific dish or type of food - Casey Fogle - Beef Stroganoff
a song - Jan Feldman - Devo "Freedom of Choice"
an emotion - Ariana Estariel - Deja Vu
October 10, 1981
Well, here it is, 30 days since my birthday, which means I have been 15 years old for one month now. I guess it’s OK so far; I dunno, it seems pretty much the same as 14 to me. I have also been in the 10th grade at my new school for one month, since my birthday happened to be on the first day of school. I kept telling myself that it would be cool, that these kids didn’t know me and it would be like starting over with a fresh clean slate, but I guess it’s the same bullshit and the same drama no matter where you go.
I was happy to leave my old school back in Michigan after Mom and Dad got divorced and Mom decided she wanted to “get the hell out of that one-horse town.” I had been going to school with the same people for my entire life, and let’s just say I was never one of the more popular kids. I thought that starting at Fillmore would be my chance to prove that there’s more to me than the “loser”, “spaz”, or “faggot” that everyone seemed to have decided I am. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that it probably wasn’t going to work out that way.
You see, Fillmore is located in the really nice part of Durham, the town in Virginia where we moved with Mom. Mom says they all come from “old money” and that their families have lived here for a hundred years. Back in Michigan, all the kids I knew were pretty much like us; that is, we weren’t poor or anything but we sure weren’t rich. Some kids’ parents were even out of work and collecting Unemployment. We mostly got our clothes at Caldor or Bradlee’s, maybe at Merry-Go-Round if we were really lucky. Well, I don’t know where the kids at Fillmore shop, but I guess you would call the look here “Preppy”, and they all look like they bought their clothes back in 1955, even though they’re only 15 or 16 years old. So, when I walked into school on the first day in my red painters’ pants and my shiniest Qiana shirt, which were totally cool back in Michigan, everyone looked at me as if I had just flown in from Jupiter or something, and right away I was already a geek and a loser on top of being the New Kid.
Anyway, I’ve had a month to get some new clothes and stuff and try to fit in more. Mom took me shopping and I bought some button-down shirts and some corduroys, even some of those weird shoes everybody wears that look like you should be wearing them on your yacht in Hyannis or something. But somehow, on me it all looks too new, too “Made in China” or something and even though I blend in a little better now, I’m sure everyone still looks at me and only sees how much I don’t really fit in.
On top of that, my skin keeps breaking out and I wake up every morning to find some huge zit or twelve on my face, and always right where you can’t miss it like on the tip of my nose or right in the middle of my forehead or something. Mom keeps saying that it’s normal and that it will go away in time, but that’s not much help when you’re talking to people and it feels like they are just looking at the huge pimple on your face and not at you, the person. And then I look around the classroom at all these well-bred kids with their perfect clothes and their Old Money, and they all have perfectly clear skin on top of it all. Sometimes I blame Mom a little for not being from Old Money and having me in Michigan where everyone wears funny clothes and gets huge zits all the time.
Anyway, I decided to write in my diary today because it’s been a pretty stressful day right from the start and sometimes writing stuff down helps me get it off my chest and deal with things a little better.
The day started off bad right from the beginning when my big brother started blasting his stupid Hall and Oates album in his bedroom, which is right next to mine, a half an hour before I even had to get up. Ricky is 19 and is taking a year off from school before he goes to college. He works construction and some days he has to be there at the crack of dawn or something. He’s such a jerk he thinks it’s perfectly OK to blast your stereo when other people are still trying to sleep and that everyone wants to wake up hearing “Maneater”.
Personally, I have never liked Ricky’s taste in music, but of course Mom and Dad had to give him his own stereo for Christmas a couple of years ago, which means I’ve been subjected to listening to his crappy music collection blaring from the room next door since then. I even gave him a set of headphones for his birthday last year, which was really a present for myself so I wouldn’t have to listen to Diana Ross and Lionel Ritchie singing “Endless Love” while he smokes bong hits at 6:30 in the morning. But he never uses them so that was a complete waste of time.
I am more into New Wave and Punk music myself, and when I got on the bus to school I was listening to Devo’s new album “Freedom of Choice” on my Walkman. My Walkman is like the best present Mom ever got me. It is tiny, no bigger than a paperback book, and it only weighs like 4 pounds, and the headphones are so small you can hardly believe they will work at all. But when you put the headphones on and pop a cassette into the Walkman, it sounds amazing, like there is a band playing right inside your head.
Anyway, so I was listening to this new tape from Devo. Everybody likes their big hit, “Whip It”, but I was listening to the title track, “Freedom of Choice”, when the bus stopped at Culpepper Road to pick up the kids there. That was where Brad Simmons got on the bus and sat down in the seat next to me. Brad Simmons is a junior. He has blond hair which he parts just off-center, and combed back from his face in layers that looks like he just shakes his head in the morning and it falls right into place. He has clear, suntanned skin and blue-green eyes with really dark eyelashes. I have never spoken to Brad Simmons in my entire life, but today he sat down next to me on the bus, and he looked at me and said, “Hey” when he sat down. His leg sort of pressed up against mine, and I kind of left it there for a few seconds when he did. I don’t know why, really, but my heart started to beat fast at that point so I closed my eyes and took a deep breath through my nose, which is what Mom says I should do whenever I feel like I’m freaking out or anything. But when I did, all I could do was smell Brad Simmons and he smelled like Ivory Soap and clean laundry and that definitely wasn’t helping my heart to stop pounding. So I decided to really tune in to the music on my Walkman to take my mind off of things.
“Freedom of choice,” they said, “is what you got”
“Freedom from choice is what you want”
I listened hard to the lyrics and tried to figure out what they meant.
“Then if you got it you don't want it
Seems to be the rule of thumb
Don't be tricked by what you see”
It seemed to me that the guys in Devo were kind of warning us. It seemed they were saying that this “freedom” we’ve got, this over-abundance of options and alternatives, is really just an illusion. What good is the freedom to choose if we are all choosing the same things? We are all being sold something and if we are not careful and not vigilant we can choose ourselves right into total conformity. I suppose I should remind myself of that the next time someone is making fun of my clothes from Caldor.
Anyway, the song was just ending as we pulled into school, my heart had stopped pounding and Brad Simmons got off the bus and disappeared into the hallway.
My Homeroom teacher, Miss Lavin, is probably about 40 years old or so. She is kind of fat, and she always wears these vested pantsuit things like “Maude” on TV. She teaches Math, but I only have her for Homeroom because she teaches Algebra and I’m taking Trig with Mr. Jefferson. Anyway, today there was a bee buzzing around the room while Mr. Michaelson, the principal, made the morning announcements over the loudspeaker. Now, in my family, if there was a bee buzzing around the room, somebody would yell “Bee!” and then grab a rolled up magazine or a can of bug spray and try to kill it. But that’s not what Miss Lavin did. I watched her, while Mr. Michaelson talked about the yearbook committee and stuff, use her body to coax that bee over by the windows, and then she managed to get it to just fly away through an open window. She never looked worried that the bee was going to sting her or anything; she never had to kill it or even roll up a magazine to scare it. After Homeroom, I waited until everyone else had left, and then I went up to her and asked her why she did that. “That bee has just as much right to the air as I do,” was all she said; and somehow when she said that to me it made perfect sense. I guess I am going to have to think more about all the other living things in this world and their “right to the air”. Maybe stomping and killing every little thing that wants to share my space isn’t the only way to go. I will have to contemplate this as my life goes on.
Anyway, third period, I had Mr. Noble for Social Studies. Mr. Noble is this totally boring, totally clueless teacher. He’s like a hundred years old and he looks like an undertaker; skinny and pale and he always wears a black suit that looks like it’s two sizes too big. Anyway, about 15 minutes into the class, the radiator by the window started making this really loud, obnoxious knocking noise. So, Noble just walks over to the radiator and kicks it, twice. Now, this guy is so old and feeble that it looks like he couldn’t kick over a stiff blade of grass, so of course the radiator just kept on knocking and knocking. He ended up just standing there for like five minutes, shaking his finger at the radiator and saying, “Hush. Hush.”, like that was going to do anything.
Anyway, when the radiator finally stopped knocking, Mr. Noble gave us our assignments for next week. There are 23 kids in that class, so he wrote down the names of 23 countries on 23 little pieces of paper, and then put the little pieces of paper into a box. We each had to pick a piece of paper at random, and then we had to write an essay about whichever country we chose. Seriously, as if anyone could just write an essay on some random topic that someone else chose! Nearly impossible, I would say. Then, to make it even more impossible, I ended up picking Burma. Burma? Really? Does anybody know anything about Burma? I sure don’t. I mean, I know that it’s in Asia but that’s about it. Plus, it was much easier in Junior High, when all you would have to do is a “report”, you know, maybe some pictures of Burma and pages that say things like “Most people in Burma are Buddhist.” or “The primary exports of Burma are timber and dried legumes.”; stuff you could get pretty easily from the pages of the World Book. But now, in High School, you have to actually write an essay, so you have to say stuff like, “Although it is culturally diverse, approximately 89% of the Burmese people practice Buddhism, which is the sixth largest religion in the world.” This makes it ten times harder, especially when you get stuck with a lame assignment like Burma.
Thankfully, after Social Studies, it was time for lunch, which was a good thing because I was starving. My stomach had been growling so much during Noble’s class I thought everyone could hear it over the sound of the radiator knocking. The board said that today’s lunch was Beef Stroganoff, and I was happy about that because I love noodles and I like beef, even if I’m not so crazy about the mushrooms.
“Hi, Mrs. Thornton,” I said to the lady behind the lunch counter. She is really nice and really pretty; and she has really nice blond hair even though they make her wear a hairnet when she’s working in the cafeteria.
“Well, hey, y’all,” she answered me with a big smile. I don’t think she has ever learned my name even though she sees me like every day, but that’s OK, I guess, because I have only been here for a month. So, she’s smiling at me as she drops this huge glob of nasty, congealed goo onto my melamine cafeteria plate. It fell from her spoon to my plate with a thud, and when it hit the plate, it did not move, or spread out, or anything. It just sat there. Like a rock. A rock made out of Pennsylvania Dutch Noodles, dog food, and cement.
“Here you go, sweet heart,” she said. Mrs. Thornton always said “sweetheart” as if it were two words. Then, she scooped some succotash onto the plate and added a little dish of green Jell-O. Like, whoever decided that this would be a good combination? Oh well, at least I actually kind of like the succotash and I can eat Jell-O if I’m hungry enough.
I found a seat at a table with Darlene Gessner and Denise Moffitt. They’re pretty nice and at least they don’t roll their eyes if I walk up to their table and try to sit down, and they’ll actually talk to me, too. We were talking about our assignments from Mr. Noble. Darlene, it turns out, has a grandmother who is really cool, like Auntie Mame. She likes to travel the world, and every year or so, Darlene gets to go with her. She’s only 15 like me, but she has already been all over the world, to Norway and Japan and even Bermuda! The furthest I have ever been from Michigan is here, where I am now, in Durham, Virginia. I’ve never even seen a palm tree. Anyway, even though Darlene and her grandmother have been all over the world, she doesn’t know anything about Burma, either.
And Denise’s family, it turns out, is really into the Exchange Student thing. That’s where a student from some foreign country like Germany or France or Yugoslavia will come over here to study for a semester or for a whole year, and in their place a student from America will go over to their country. Denise’s family has hosted kids from Scotland, Belgium, Iceland- all over the world, but Denise doesn’t think there is such a thing as an exchange student from Burma.
Then, while we were sitting there, and I was listening to Denise talk about how cute she thought the guy from Scotland was who stayed at their house the year before, the weirdest thing happened to me. Denise was talking and I was kind of pushing the Jell-O around on my plate when somebody slammed a door or something, and suddenly I had the strangest feeling that it had all happened before. It felt like I knew just what Denise was going to say even before she said it. Maybe I had dreamt it, I don’t know. But I had been sitting in that chair before, hearing those noises, those words, before; pushing those green cubes of Jell-O around my plate before. It was a really weird, freaky feeling and for a minute I thought I might be losing my mind, but when Darlene and Denise looked at me, they just kept right on talking as if nothing were different. So, I haven’t told anyone about this experience but I am paying close attention. Maybe I am one of those people who have been given a “gift”, like predicting the next day’s headlines, talking to dead movie stars, or telling you what day of the week September 11, 2001 will fall on.
In the meantime, though, I have not been given any special powers when it comes to bullshitting my way through an essay about Burma. We still have the 1964 edition of the World Book that Mom brought with us from Michigan down in the basement. With any luck, I’ll be able to stretch their 3 paragraphs into a 3 page essay by Friday. It would have been much easier if I had drawn the name of a country that people actually cared about, like England or France, from Mr. Noble’s box of possibilities. But life, I am finding, hardly ever hands you the easy assignment. So I’ll write about Burma.
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