The horror in the hair incident

The last year of elementary school was rough. We had just moved to a new, bigger city where 6th grade fell under "elementary." I was new, and naive, and all the styles were different, and suddenly very aware of my Harry Potter glasses (before they were trendy) and my buck teeth. And the things I did to minimize my lameness only made it worse.


Of course.


For example, I was terribly self-conscious about the HUGE HIDEOUS SCAR* on my lower lip. I got teased a lot about my face because I had the general facial proportions of a poison dart frog. The boys at school called me "catfish" and would swim past me in the hallways, exaggeratedly gulping in water to filter through their gills. Though the constant teasing related to the size of my mouth, I somehow related it to my HUGE HIDEOUS SCAR and tried to cover it with makeup. From the ages of 11-13 I wore thick, dark dark purple lipstick two shades lighter than "goth massacre." And sometimes when I tired of the kiddie Marilyn Manson look, I switched to a shiny metallic blue lipgloss. No one would see my HUGE HIDEOUS SCAR so they'd stop picking on me, right? For some bizarre reason the teasing continued.


But all this was about to change.


I was going to enter the seventh grade.


My elementary school class would be splitting up, integrating with new people who didn't know I was a certified dork. And after all, MIDDLE SCHOOL shone as a cultural and social beacon of acceptance and new chances. What could go wrong?


Pretty much everything.


For starters, my mean mean Lady Mother made me ride the bus. I suppose in her defense, Lil Watz had to be at Elementary school at almost the exact same time, but still. The elementary school technically backed up to our backyard. He could walk. All he needed to do was cross a rushing toxic-sludge creek, wade through brambles and vicious underbrush on a unmarked path, not piss off the angry souls resting in the scary potter's field (which I discovered on day by TRIPPING OVER A GRAVESTONE. Second-scariest moment of my life), and crossing a desolate field. Totally doable for a third-grader. GOSH MOM.


All the jackasses who picked on me in sixth grade? Yeah, turns out they all lived in my neighborhood. Meaning, they all rode my bus. Meaning, for thirty minutes every morning and thirty minutes every afternoon, there was no adult supervision to quell their merciless torment.


I had entered middle school, and also apparently hell.


Though bookended by the slow, methodical destruction of my self esteem, I enjoyed class. I met my bff (still to this day, ten years later) A. Stox in my homeroom and really enjoyed my teachers. I think they were kind of worried about me, though. My language arts teacher pulled me aside to suggest dyslexia testing once, and I explained to her that I'd gotten bored and decided to start writing all my vowels mirror-flipped. She was not amused. I flipped them back.


A. Stocks and I greatly enjoyed our homeroom, which doubled as pre-algebra. Less of the lumbering jerks in this class. Our teacher, Mr. Ra, was in a word, ostentatious. He wore bright, loud clothes and shouted about pre-algebra in a bright, loud manner. And the hand gestures. Oh child. Those wild exaggerated hand motions would put an angry Italian mother to shame. But I liked him, and pre-algebra presented the first scholastic challenge since... ever, so I mostly felt content.


One crisp autumn morning I was in particularly high spirits as I waited for the bus. The weather seemed lovely, the trees all aglow. I mostly tuned out the "you're so ugly / bug eyes / hey catfish face / swim home to your school of ugly catfish / catfish face / ugly ugly ugly" chorus and listened to a CD on my portable CD player (good gravy I'm old. Also I listened to Switchfoot's "Dare You To Move" which was branded weird freak music until a year later when they put out a music video on MTV) and went on to class. Things were going swimmingly (ha, fishpun) until...


"MISTER RA OH MY GOD THERE'S SOMETHING MOVING IN R.GRACE'S HAIR OH MY GOD OH MY GOD GROSS."


I froze.


This had to be some sort of mean joke, right? But I barely knew the kid sitting next to me, and she had on a look of utter revulsion even worse than the faces of my bus bullies. And suddenly, because it had been pointed out, my scalp crawled with unfathomable itching. I pictured my entire head overrun with lice, millions of white bugs trafficking about me. My whole body ached yearning to scratch my head until I'd torn all my hair out and destroyed the source of the itching. twenty-seven pair of viciously judgmental preteen eyes locked on my thin, mortified frame. I was going to die. If not from lice, then of embarrassment.


Mr. Ra came over, furious to be interrupted from his lavish lecture and looked at my head. And shrieked.


"OH MY GOD R.GRACE WHAT IS THAT GET IN THE HALLWAY NOW."


His face, a mask of horror. His arms, windmilling in terror. Even my teacher thought I was gross.


I hung my head in shame and shuffled to the hallway, Mr. Ra close behind. We arrived outside the classroom and I realized every other teacher on the hall had their door open. Slacker students, unmoved by their teachers' soliloquies on social studies, suddenly grew vastly entertained by the spectacle right outside their door. I still had an audience witnessing my humiliation.


Mr. Ra danced around me for a second, muttering things that sounded like "nasty" and "disgusting" as I tried to think of how to politely ask my parents how to ship me off to boarding school on another continent. Suddenly he issued a command: "Hold still." I froze.


He proceeded to SWAT AT MY HEAD WITH A RULER.


I'm pretty sure that's illegal, but desperate times call for desperate measures.


After two swipes (I'm pretty sure the first one was just for dramatic effect), something wiggly and strange flew out on the floor.


A fuzzy wuzzy caterpillar.


Or, Pyrrharctia isabella, also known as a woolly bear. About an inch-and-a-half long, bright orange and black. It shuffled along on the cheap tile, beginning its long trek home.


And it had been hanging out in my hair for at least two hours. I realized it must have fallen out of one of the big pine trees I stood under as I waited for the bus. Two small miracles had occurred in that short time: none of the bus bastards had noticed the giant woolly bear wriggling on my head. And also, I had somehow managed to not squish it with my headphones. A caterpillar was pretty bad, I'd been permanently scarred for life, but at least it wasn't caterpillar guts. I mean, gross.


Mr. Ra straightened his collar. I looked around the hall to see the faces of students framed in the doorways, eye wide with terror that a teacher had just whacked me about the head multiple times. As soon as I caught their eyes, they turned away with rapt attention to their teachers, lest they received a thwacking too.


"Don't ever let that happen again." Mr. Ra said stiffly and turned to reenter the classroom.


I stood there for a moment in utter shock at the events of the last five minutes. The entire class, and by lunchtime the entire seventh grade, knew I had a giant bug crawling across my head and I hadn't even noticed it. Why on earth would I have just let this happen? How had it even been possible for such a strange turn of events in the first place? Though I didn't entirely understand it then, a few things started clicking into place in my mind. Sure I had my hopes and dreams, but the universe worked in a very precise and specific way, and one true thing would soon become all too apparent...


I was never going to be cool.












* I got the HUGE HIDEOUS SCAR when I was a wee babe and busted my face on a metal stool while trying to pull up and stand on my lardy baby legs. (Yes, the Grace in R.Grace was apparent at such a tender age) I never noticed it until I was seven and some kid at 4-H Club Camp came up to me and said "what's wrong with your face?" When I asked her to explain, she asserted, "Your mouth. Why is it so ugly in the corner right there?" And then she took my cookie and walked off.


In recent (like, embarrassingly recent) years, I realized the HUGE HIDEOUS SCAR is but a small twinge in the corner of my lip, and no one ever mentioned it because it's not very noticeable. I have made peace with what used to be my self-confidence kryptonite, like, "you do your thing and be there on my face, but I'm not tilting my head in that direction for pictures." 


And life goes on.

The Boy in the Band Incident: Part One - No Pants

This actually turned out to be four stories in one.
Two of them involve no pants.

In high school, I had a thing for experimental freak grunge prog rock shows.

I also had a thing for crazy musicians.

With those two sentences, you already know this is going to end badly.

(I also had a thing for boys with, in retrospect, really gross hair. I have since implemented one of my two hard-and-fast dating rules: NO BOYS WITH LONG HAIR. Always trouble.)

The last year and a half of high school I spent a considerable amount of weekends and choice weeknights at this run down warehouse-turned-venue on the outskirts of downtown. I dutifully paid my "suggested donation" and stood to the side with my arms crossed and my head nodding appreciatively to everything from technical metal to freak folk wailing and chants. This seemed like the ideal hang out for a "cool" teenager, as it was mostly pre-hipster college folks. It seemed a different country from my clean-cut, straight-As, high school existence.

I went to these shows with three main friends: one who drove, one who knew how to attract attention, and one who actually knew some of the bands and how to intrinsically "be" cool. And then there was me - both the motivator and the mom. The moderator and mitigator. Such a problem.

So hip, you guys. I am gonna score me some rockstars.

One night toward the end of junior year we decided to stay out SO LATE (until ONE am, crazy, I know) probably because Lady Mom and Dr. Dad were out of town. I felt hella cool in the polkadot dress I'd found at goodwill that my cool friend had chopped the sleeves of off. I think I wore Keds with it that evening. Top of hipster style, I assure you.

The headlining band that evening was a punk rock group from the southwest who went on to... not do much else, from the looks of their facebook page and myspace. They had a temporary stand-in lead singer who was supposed to be pretty good. The crowd was solid and energetic; the beer flowed (and I snuck it away from my friends and placed it on tables, etc. since we were underage! Eesh, so dangerous!) and the opening bands rocked. The combination of these three elements inspired one cool cat to drunk climb on the stage overhang and take his shirt off and spin it around. This sight caused the drunk college hipsta-bros next to us to remark:

"ahhh man what a wimp / he's not even stripping / that's not the way to do it / get naked or get off / rabble rabble rabble."

I laughed and that caught their attention enough to continue ragging on the poor stumbling (and not-well guarded against falling on top of us and snapping my slender high school neck) drunk who was trying to remove his pants to flail them around. Their heckling got louder, until my friend who knew how to attract attention turned and pierced them with an equally come-hither and die-bitch stare and said:

"Why don't you shut up and go show him how it's done?"

I echoed her sentiments, feeling all I-am-woman-hear-me-roar and giddy off of two cigarettes and being out past 11pm until... they did it. I cheered along, hoping for some hot abdominal muscles or, you know, a decently humorous story to awe all my wide-eyed AP-course-taking friends. Be careful what you wish for.

Something about punk rawk, man, just makes boys want to take their clothes off.

So these two even more drunk boys clamber above the stage and goad the lone drunkerd off to the side. They proceeded to rip off their shirts and jeans, windmilling them overhead to the great shouts of laughter and encouragement until... wait, what are they doing? They've put down their shirts... They're taking off their boxers... are they really going to... is that a.... ? Oh. my. god.

EWW EWW OH MY GOD GROSS EWW FREAK OUT NOW.

I shrieked and buried my face in my hands. My friend tried to pry my fingers away from my eyes, whooping along with the crowd.

And that is how I saw my first naked man.

---

To our other side, once the overhead nakedness subsided, another equally enthralling chap engaged us in conversation. He was the roadie for Awesome Headlining Band and bff of the temporary lead singer. Didn't care. He was intoxicated (this a running theme with poserish boys at concerts), a little repulsive, and altogether uninteresting. I mostly ignored him. And then the Awesome Headlining Band came out and I saw the lead singer.

Ba-DING Ba-DING. Two big red cartoon hearts popped up in my eye sockets. My first case of full-bodied rockstar lust.

I was IN LOVE. This boy was beautiful. And he knew how to rock. And his best friend was standing right next to me. Suddenly, I became very interested in everything the best friend had to say.

"Oh my gosh that is so interesting / and you've been touring with them how long / tell me everything about them / oh yeahhh you did mention you were friends with D / ohhh best friends? / ohhh wow cool / so what's it like tell me EVERYTHING / uh huh uh huh / ohhhh the set's over boo"

Miss Emily Post rolled over in her grave from my charming etiquette and conversational prowess.

Right on cue, Lead Singer walked over to talk to his best friend about loading amps or something equally boring. And there I was with my winning smile (probably with scary serial-killer eyes, it took me a while to learn how to tone down my enthusiasm.) wearing my totally cool thrifted dress, and being INTERESTED IN THINGS.

He said something profound (probably: Oh, hey) and I swooned. In the .5 seconds I'd known him I'd fully succumbed to Total Groupie Syndrome* it was baaad. My friends crowded around to chat, keeping the conversation the appropriate level of we're-like-totally-in-college-whatever awesome. I'd completely forgotten his gross friend and zeroed in on every beautiful (and arrogantly pretentious) word falling from his mouth. This wasn't like all of the other bands I'd seen here at the Warehouse. These guys were going to BE SOMETHING and REALLY GONNA MAKE IT. Oh, be still, my heart.

I noticed a shuffling in the corner of my eye.

His drunk friend loudly told some stupid story from an earlier concert, gesticulating wildly with one hand and... undoing his belt with the other? He managed to unhook his belt, mid-story, and started unbuttoning his pants. We stood there in the middle of the Warehouse, actual groupies shuffling around carrying amps, tattooed girls trading alt-rock hookup stories behind us over the haze of American Spirit smoke, and the drunk friend was removing his pants. Nonchalantly. Still telling his story.

I was both horrified and incapable of looking away.

Suddenly, he stopped. He looked down at his pants now approaching his knees (undergarments still on THANK GOD) looked slowly at us girls with gaping mouth and wide eyes, and then to the Lead Singer. He the spoke again.

"Aw man, you gotta tell me when I'm taking my pants off in public. I can't get in trouble for this again!"

He shuffled away, hiking up his pants and muttering curses.

This had happened before? This was a thing? Accidentally forgetting you were removing your clothing... and in front of underage girls, no less? I've read about many types of systematic memory loss, but never in my psychology studies had I seen someone who JUST DIDNT REALIZE HE WAS GETTING NAKED.

And that is how I did NOT see another naked man.

* Total Groupie Syndrome (TGS): Behavior exhibited by typically desperate girls wanting to score with a band member. Nausea-inducing to anyone not afflicted. Symptoms begin with flushed faces, dizziness, uncontrollable batting eyelashes, and excessive giggling. Also earnestly CARING about the band's goals and artistic vision. When not treated with a healthy dose of reality or a well-meaning bitchslap, symptoms can progress to ostentatious flirting, lofty statements and delusions of grandeur and true-love-forever and irrepressible lust. Not to be confused with the even-more-severe "actual love," the onset of TGS is swift, sudden, and may require little or no interaction with the intended target.

(the bangability scale tends to go from lead singer, percussionist?, lead guitarist, drums, and then last and usually least, the bassist. Though now in our ironic, post-hip society, the bassists have suddenly started being in high demand. Thank you, I started that trend.)

---

So does R. Grace end up with her band boy (not likely)? Does the evening end in shambles or hilarity? Will she ever stay up past one again? And how does relationship advice from a chimney-smoke English teacher play into all of this? How does this forever shape our fearless heroine's dating adventures?


I guess you'll have to wait until the next post!


---


Post inspired by my jaunt to the Honda Civic Tour last night to see Matt & Kim, MCR, and Blink 182. My middle-school self is still jumping around excitedly. Goodnight loves.

The Notecard Romeo Incident

As I printed a script in the student union this afternoon, I noticed an awk freshman boy leaning out of his chair, ignoring his study group to stare at me. Clearly he was impressed by my aura of senior swagger, because the curly-hair, no-makeup, glasses, baggy-shirt combo I am currently rocking does not emit babe vibes. But it reminded me of another strange incident from my freshman year...

I hate modernist literature.

It is so damn hard to read. Nonlinear, changing narrators, metaphors out the ass. As John Mayer would huskily whisper-sing: "say what you need to say" and not a damn thing more. I get that the World Wars really messed you guys up, and I'm sorry for that, but seriously. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? I AM.

But my freshman year of college, I thought it would be a cool idea to take a freshman literary seminar examining how different cities were represented through modernist literature. Doesn't that just sound so... hip? complicated? bullshit? College. It sounded like a "college" class.

So here I sat, in the top level of the student union, cross legged on an overstuffed armchair, trying to force myself to read (and understand, dammit) the first half of St. Petersburg by Andrei Biely. In English, of course. But just like a Chekov play (theaters professors LOVE them some Chekov) the story became extremely difficult to follow because everyone had long, complicated double names with two or three nicknames, depending on who was addressing them.

It was like the Count of Monte Cristo, but with less action.

I am laboriously applying myself to the task at hand. As much as I disliked the subject matter, the class and the professor were AMAZING. The professor remains one of the smartest people I know. She's on the MLA board, for crying out loud. Every wide-eyed high schooler who's ever had to cite a paper or buy an MLA handbook breathes in a collective gasp.


So focused am I on this book (My only contribution to the class discussion at this point would be: Who the hell names a character Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov?) that I don't entirely notice the person placing something on my desk and walking away.


This is a commonplace thing. People are always handing out mini-fliers for comedy events, cancer-fighting-things, interesting meetings, ect. I once amassed six separate handbills for events over the span of one lunch in the cafeteria. The student union is a popular place to hand out these bills. If the person currently at the table doesn't take it, someone else will come along in 20 minutes and be passionately interested in your cause.


After a long, arduous journey around St. Petersburg (roughly 5 minutes later) I look up at the flyer on my desk, hoping for some distraction. But instead, I saw a plain white 3x5 notecard with a name on it.


Way more interesting than Apollo Anotononin-too-many-damn-syllables.

To this day, I can't really remember the name, and I profusely apologize to you. I know it was two syllables, ending in an -en sound. Nathan? Kevin? I think it was Kevin. Nathan/Kevin, if you're reading this, I'm sorry.

On the front side, Nathan/Kevin was printed in jaggedy boy hand-writing with an arrow to the back. Flipping it over revealed:

"... is a really nice guy who would like to take you to dinner sometime if you'd leave your number #_____________."

Um. What.

Suddenly the overwhelming feeling of someone watching me washed over my being. It was like a screenwriter couldn't decide between a romantic comedy and a stalker slasher film.

"Be cool," I thought. "He's probably waiting for your reaction. Don't act weird."

I acted weird.

I glanced around the rest of the room, holding the notecard. No one made any move of recognition, no head-nod, no hand-wave, nothing. If Nathan/Kevin was still in the room, he made no move to call attention to himself.

And I had nothing to go on.

I had a very generic first name (no last name), so I couldn't facebook stalk. It wasn't like I was in a classroom where I could look him up on the class roll. I had no number or email. I hadn't looked up when Nathan/Kevin placed the card in front of me, because I assumed it was just another handbill solicitor, and like with rabid animals, you don't look them in the eye.

Well damn.

I was really flattered (and single and young and overly romantic) but I was not about to leave my number on a random card in the middle of the student union. If Nathan/Kevin had already left, heart crushed that I hadn't reacted to his immediate presence, the card might not be picked up by Nathan/Kevin the Romantic, but Bob/Ted the Serial Rapist. And I already had enough problems as a freshman without adding "stalked by a psychotic murderer" to the list.

I put the card in my bag and looked around a bit more, winning-smile on my face (hopefully giving off "don't you want to talk to me?" vibes and not "I am a crazy bunny-cooker" vibes). No one approached me, but the creepy feeling of being watched persisted. I got up slowly, packing my books away. I lingered by the stairs. Please, please, follow through with your grand romantic gesture. Talk to me. Do something. I want to go out with you but I have no idea who you are!

Also my bitch roommate would be super jealous.

But alas, Nathan/Kevin never approached me.

I sat in the same area at the same time for the rest of the week, hoping for contact. I had no possible way of discerning him. The weird feeling of being watched never came back, and instead the broke-up-with-my-highschool-boyfriend-to-come-here-and-nobody-likes-me loneliness came back. I kept the notecard for around a year, buried in the bottom of my bookbag, and I always glance around when I'm in a crowd, just in case.

Nathan/Kevin, wherever you are, I would have gone out to dinner with you.

But seriously man, you've got to step your game up.

The middle school boyfriend incident

I had a crush a middle school bad boy.

Now in my middle-school, and to my unendingly naive self, the definition of a "bad boy" was someone who talked back to the teachers, pushed the classroom rules a bit, was always cracking slightly inappropriate jokes and had made out with a couple girls and maybe smoked a cigarette once. (We'll call him Walter.)

Nowadays, I know middle school bad boys smoke pot and get blowjobs, but this was still turn-of-the-millennium. We weren't corrupted to the core. I am not putting my sweet future spawn into public school lest they become baby prostitute crackheads, but that is another conversation entirely.

Not only was Walter bad and cool, but he was smart too. We sat near each other in our accelerated classes since our last names were similar, and we were in the same TAG (Talented and Gifted / Academically Gifted / pretentious acronym) program that met weekly. Walter made me laugh. He treated me like a person - I was still kind of "the new kid," only moving to town a year before, and most people still regarded me warily (who is this dork with glasses and buckteeth and why is she talking to us? type of warily).

The combination of middle school dorkiness, being a lonely new kid, preteen hormones and slight attention was a deadly combination: I was completely smitten. 

We talked a lot in between classes; sometimes we were partners for projects. One glorious moment at the end-of-semester trip to the skating rink for all the kids who met their AR reading requirements, he held my hand for a whole "couple skate" song. Oh heavens, I was just over the moon for this boy.

I really liked Walter. "Like like" not just regular like, as they say in middle school. We flirted (I think it was flirting? Middle school is like some heathen uncivilized tribe when it comes to mating rituals). I wanted to be his giiirlfriend. I didn't know what exactly being his giiirlfriend would mean, but I wanted to hold his hand in between classes and "hang out" and totally try that whole making out thing. I mean, making out sounded gross (tongues? ewww...) but I wanted to be desired. And did I mention he was cool?

One day our TAG group sat in the library computer lab researching some project. Most people weren't paying attention, chatting to each other or walking around. Dreamboat Walter stood behind me. I tried to pretend like I was focusing on my work, but I was mostly likely blushing like a beet and hanging on his every word.

"So you like me right?" He asked, a sly smile on his face.

Ohmigosh he is going to ask me to be his giiirlfriend BE COOL BE COOL

"Uh... I mean, it's like whatever. Why?" Totally calms as a cucumber he is going to ask me to be his giiirlfriend in front of the whole library ohmigosh.

"I think you should check out this website..." He leaned over to type on my computer, his arm brushing me. Swoon, swoon. He probably had the (now absolutely repugnant) smell of Axe Body Spray emanating from every pore. I had no idea what websites had to do with his certain declaration of love, but it didn't matter. I looked up at him, eyes aglow with mega-first-crush-beams and he said...

"You should go to www. GROW SOME BOOBS AND THEN I WOULD DATE YOU hahaha" he announced, loud enough to turn the heads of everyone else half paying attention to their projects. I froze.

He wasn't asking me out.

He said the word "boobs" aloud.

He just insulted me.

He just insulted me LOUDLY.

He just insulted my "private parts" loudly.

Who the hell has boobs in seventh grade? 

The proper response would be, of course, to call him a M*F*er, ask him if his balls had dropped yet, and slap him in the face. Unfortunately, I didn't know the MF word yet or anything about testicles, and I was way to shy too cause a commotion. So I sat there staring at my computer screen, the hateful fake URL typed in the address bar, face red and biting back tears while he laughed and laughed and finally moved on to his friends.

I have never felt bad about my weight, but it was the first time I was ever self-conscious about my figure. How was I supposed to just grow a pair of boobs? Other girls didn't really look like they had apples up top. Lady mum asked me a couple weeks prior if I wanted to get a training bra and I vehemently said NO, I didn't want something itchy and tight and lifty and... talking about BOOBS with my mother? Dramatic eye roll, kill me now.

(oh how the tides have turned on that last statement. I recently asked Lady Mum if she wanted anything spicy from a friend of mine who's a consultant for "Slumber Parties" and I thought she was going to explode from embarrassment.)

I still pined over Walter for a couple more weeks, but avoided his jokes and conversations. My heart was just shattered. (Though I felt slightly proud that he was at least looking in the direction of my chest. That meant something, right?) I didn't understand how juvenile and flighty boys were; I didn't understand how he could suddenly turn on me. I was devastated, and feeling the first ever twinges of self-consciousness. Suddenly, I was aware that I WAS INFERIOR. 

A year or so ago he added me on facebook - we'd gone to different high schools and fallen out of touch. He sent me a message to the effect of "hey whats up / you look really good." Amazingly enough, I had managed to somehow grow some boobs since middle school.

And you know what? I resisted the urge to call him a M*F*er.