Part the First: Into the Fray
When I was little, I almost always got a new outfit for the first day of school. When I was really little, it was a "first day of school dress," and I was always super-excited about it. The first day of school was always a new experience for me, moreso than for most, because I was always at a different school. Yes, gentle reader, except for my fourth and fifth grade years, I went to a different school for each year of elementary (which included, back in my day, sixth grade as well). In all, I have been the new girl eight times, if you count kindergarten and two universities, which may skew the data a bit since, in those situations, everyone is the new girl. Or boy. But even not counting those, I have three summers' worth of summer programs where I didn't know anybody, and then two summers of working in new places where I didn't know anybody--all leading to the conclusion that I have been forced to make an alarming number of first impressions during my brief existence.
Part the Second: In Which Our Heroine Judges Books By Their Covers and is Judged in Turn
I used to sit in new classrooms and look at people, trying to guess which ones were going to be my friends. I was almost never right. Or, to be more specific, there were a lot of false positives, but only a few false negatives. I could tell who was not going to be my friend quite reliably. The characteristics by which I determined this naturally changed over time--I hardly remember anyone specific from my kindergarten and first grade classes, but I remember a few characteristics: the girl who stood in front of me in our alphabetical line for the cafeteria had awful-smelling hair. She was not going to be my friend. With one exception, boys were probably not going to be my friend until middle school, where they might be my friends if I met them through theater, but very rarely if I met them through school. The exception was in fourth grade, where a kid named John played the New Boy opposite my New Girl, and he may have been my first crush. I adored him because A) he didn't make my life miserable, and B) he hadn't grown up in Belmont, North Carolina. That meant, I thought, that the odds were good he came from a more enlightened place. He and I were both Library Assistants, which made us supreme nerds but meant that we got to leave class for a few hours each week to help the librarians shelve books and check them out to students. Sometimes we did this together, which was nice, and sometimes we did it alone, which was sublime. Children are so seldom alone, and I craved it. I hated that school and most of the people in it, but I loved that library because it was an escape. A place to be surrounded by stories better than the one you were in, where the harsh voices of my provinicial schoolmates who thought their lives were the whole world could not penetrate. To be fair, I probably thought my life was the greater part of the world as well, but at least I knew about global warming and endangered species and the Holocaust and the fact that you can't call black people the N word. Most of the people at my school were not thusly educated.
So I sat in class and surveyed all these new people, year after year, looking for likely friends. I discounted the boys with buzz-cuts and rattails and anyone who sweated a lot or was fat. I look back and wonder why I did to them, in my mind, exactly what others did to me in person that made me hate them. And it's sad, scary even to admit, that even at 9 I had some inkling of social capital, and those people were not it. My deep, dark, dirty secret is: I wanted to be in with the in-crowd.
The in-crowd. The girls who never set foot in a K-Mart or a thrift store (until it was cool in 10th grade), whose sweatshopped shirts proclaimed the names of elitist brands in large letters, with "Made in Honduras" in the fine print. One in particular never wore the same outfit twice for all of fifth grade. They laughed at people, made fun, criticized. They were neither very good nor very bad at school. They looked at me with disbelief when they discovered I didn't go to church and that my dad taught at a college for black people. Imagine what they would have done if they knew he taught evolution. My father further added to my mortification by attending a school open house carrying his "green bag," which I had always taken for granted until an in-crowd girl came up to me, giggling: "Your dad carries a purse?!" One time, never-repeat-an-outfit girl and one of her cronies told me I needed a makeover, and pulled my shirt out of my pants where it was tucked in and told me I shouldn't wear those colors together. They suggested I tweeze my eyebrows. And for some reason, rather than suggest they shove their tweezers somewhere unmentionable, rather than tell them they were silly buffoons and I couldn't believe I had to go to school with the likes of them, I wanted to be them. Not, I think, because I wanted to treat other people as they did, but because I saw that no one treated them the way they treated me. At least, I like to think so.
Part the Third: In Which Our Heroine Discovers Self-Consciousness
You might think, after a forced makeover in the hall, I would have learned self-consciousness the hard way. But even though I saw that they had things I didn't, and I wanted their name-brand clothes and their condescending attitudes against my better judgment, I never saw myself as others saw me, which is the true meaning of self-consciousness. Until the first day of school, sixth grade, when I discovered my butt.
By the ripe age of ten, I had certainly begun to notice other people's butts. Their whole bodies, in fact. Not with desire so much as noticing what looked attractive and what didn't, especially as pertained to different types of clothing, and I would look at adults and either wish I could look like that someday or hope I never looked like that ever. Butts were only a small part of the equation. But, trying on clothes in anticipation of the first day of school (I was beyond first-day-of-school dresses at this point, instead attempting to create the perfect f-d-o-s ensemble from found objects in my closet) I accidentally turned around in front of the mirror and saw myself from behind.
I take this for granted now, when trying on clothes at the store. Of course you look at yourself from behind. You do the little shimmy to try to simulate how your butt will look while walking. You bend over and see if anything obscene happens. But before that day when I was ten, I don't think I had ever looked at myself from behind. I had never realized that other people saw me from behind. But I understood now that they did, and that if my own nature was at all indicative of human nature, they (at least some of them) were evaluating me. And their first impression of me would be what I saw in that mirror: baggy jeans that hung like a sack and made my butt look dumpy. Before that day, when I looked in the mirror, I only saw myself. Since that day, when I look in the mirror, I see what I imagine others see.
Part the Fourth: Fast-Forward
It is now 2005, and I am no longer in fourth, fifth, or sixth grade. The trends of self-consciousness and conflicting desires do be both a smart, independent person and a stupid, popular lemming continued throughout high school, and to a lesser but certainly still present extent throughout college, the difference being their waning slightly year by year and the fact that I had friends, so I was not going it alone anymore. I am now a self-confident adult, it's pretty safe to say. If I indulge in throes of self-doubt now, it's always to do with my choices and plans for my life, not my appearance or popularity. I don't know whether to attribute my surge in self-confidence since leaving Duke to A) leaving Duke, B) having Jodi in my life, or C) natural maturation and wisdom, but each has probably played a part. Now, on the first day of school, I debate wearing nice clothes or going to the gym right before class and showing up sweaty (the former won, but only because I was too lazy to go to the gym).
I've used this opportunity to observe others on their first day of school, though. The sorority girls at Wake are all wearing their matching sorority T-shirts and flip-flops--I guess so they can pick out their kind in the crowds. One of my roommates, a new teacher, bought a skirt to wear on her first day of school. The other, who has been teaching for a few years, didn't know what she was going to wear till she got up this morning. But the most touching observations came on Tuesday, when I accompanied Amanda on a trek across town to visit each of her 9 students in their homes, to meet their parents and make sure they knew how and when to get to school on the big day. Amanda's teaching at an ESL middle school, and all of her students are recent (in the last year) arrivals from Mexico and Honduras. Amanda is bravely trucking ahead, even with limited Spanish skills, and announced she was going to do home visits and she had scripted out things to say to the families in Spanish and their possible questions. I asked if she wanted someone to go with her, for moral support, safety in numbers, and the occasional language backup. So we set off to meet her students (glory be to Mapquest).
They had names like Ana, Felix, Luis Infante, and Maria Guadalupe. They lived in houses filled with people, babies, and Virgin Marys everywhere you look. And they were so excited about school. Their parents invited us in, and made us sit down even if it meant they had nowhere to sit. They thanked us so much for coming, even when we interrupted their dinner. Amanda got to school today at 6:30 AM (it starts at 7:30), and two children were already there with their parents, who had to be at work at 7:00. She said they had a wonderful day. At 2:00, their families were waiting outside the door of the classroom to pick them up, wanting to hear how, for many of them, their first day of school in America had gone.
That seems ideal to me. A first day of school filled with happiness and excitement, rather than nervousness and fear. But then it seems natural for them, who have probably known real fear in their lives, probably experienced it in the process of arriving here in this land of promise, that school wouldn't be scary. After real fear and danger, first impressions, and even the first day of school, are a piece of cake.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Sunday, August 14, 2005
It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
My parents have received two citations from the City of Charlotte--one about mowing the grass, and one about clearing weeds from the borders of the property. After the first, we were a bit suspicious--only the backyard grass was high enough to write home about, and it seemed unlikely that roving inspectors whose job it is to find flaw with Charlotte citizens' lawn hygiene (whom we didn't know existed prior to our citation) would have noticed. The second one was a pretty big tip-off that this was not just our unluck of being chosen at random. We were being ratted out by our neighbors.
Picture this: we live in a lovely neighborhood full of lovely folks, most of whom voted for Kerry, many of whom have children and dogs and say hi as you pass and sit on their porches sipping wine in the summer twilight. Most people in our neighborhood would never get this kind of citation, but if they did, they would probably have a good idea of which of their neighbors was the tattletale. But we happen to live between two houses whose inhabitants were equally likely to have made the fateful call. So naturally, after grumbling about having to fix the lawn mower, our family conversations fell to the topic of which neighbors were the culprits.
Neighbor A, on the left side, as you're facing our house, was my mother's favored contender. Let's call her Lurlene for our purposes here. For the 12 years that we've lived here, she has lived alone, keeping the same daily routine, becoming older and dumpier year by year as the weight of time crashes upon her. She works in a security booth at some ritzy subdivision, but be not fooled--she doesn't really come across as the bouncer type. The church on our corner holds weekly AA meetings, and the attendees' cars have been known to spill over now and again onto the street. Lurlene's response was to put up a sign reading "No AA Parking" in front of her house. A few years ago, she cut down a big tree in her yard, which was the only beautiful thing about said yard in the first place, and replaced it with gravel on which to park her car. My dad has not spoken to her since.
Neighbors B, on the right side, shall hereby be called John and Maude. John is probably approaching 60 if he's not there already, and Maude is his mother, about whose age we will not venture a guess. John does some kind of work with computers in South Carolina, and Maude spends her time spying on her neighbors out the window and playing computer solitaire. She comes out to have a word with us if we or our visitors park in front of our house too close to her driveway, since it would be unsafe for her to back out (in her estimation). That's if she had somewhere to go, which seems a rather rare occurrence--but then, I don't spy on her as often as she probably does on me, so I'm not 100% sure. They have a can-crusher mounted on the side of their house outside my bedroom window, and they seem to get great joy from crushing about 50 cans a day at 7:00 in the morning. They have a greyhound that John walks once in the morning and once in the evening to a distance of about 4 houses away before returning home. Once, a tree limb from one of our trees was hanging over their side porch roof and threatening everything they hold dear. They told us we would have to pay for them to call someone to take care of it. My dad said he would do it. They said this was unacceptable for liability reasons. My dad said he wouldn't pay for someone else to do it. Finally, they said he could do it as long as he didn't set foot on their property, which proved impossible. He did end up standing on their property to remove the limb, a situation complicated by Maude's insistence on standing beside him for the entire process. They remind me of the ancient lady on the street where I grew up whose only pleasure in life was yelling at me when I ran around without shoes in the summertime.
My mom's arguments for Lurlene were strong. Lurlene is very picky about her yard, and keeps her grass trimmed within an inch of its life. She has just planted vegetables right next to our yard on her side of the fence, and she's probably mad that they're shaded by our vegetation. And she doesn't speak to us anymore. My mom says she'll say "Hi, Lurlene," and receive no response. I was not so convinced--John and Maude seemed just as strong contenders at least in the having-nothing-better-to-do department. They had a yard sale recently in which they had many items for sale for hundreds of dollars: camera lenses, darkroom equipment, a spotless guitar, computer hard drives. They came over and encouraged us to come to their yard sale. We went, but unfortunately I had neither the $700 nor the space to construct my own darkroom, so I contented myself with buying two Beach Boys records for $1 each. Before completing the sale they asked if we were sure we didn't want a camera or a hard drive. When the yard sale was over, they asked if we wanted to buy any more of their records (most of which were German Christmas music).
Within my family, we all tended to agree that the only way to know for sure was to confront them, but no one wanted to be the one to do it. Lurlene was considered the more likely candidate, and my dad refuses to talk to her. My mom decided it was surely her and set about hacking away all the vegetation on that side of the yard that could in any way offend. It took two days. She did some basic pruning of the other side as well, and two weeks later an inspector appeared at our doorstep, saying he was here to mow our grass. By this time, our grass had died. "We don't have any grass," my mother said. He admitted that this appeared to be the case. "In that case, I'm here to trim your border weeds," he offered. My mom said she had done that. He agreed, and they were in the yard trying to decide of there were any left that were complaint-worthy, when John, from his side of the fence, asked why we hadn't cleared the side for which we had received the citation (which, for the record, made no mention of sides).
The mystery was solved. At least, now, we could find out which weeds had been cause for complaint. In a striking instance of deja-vu, there were some that could not be cleared from our side of the property, but Maude initially insisted that we couldn't set foot on hers. She did offer a half-apology: regarding the citation, "I'm sorry we had to do that to you." My dad asked her why she didn't just ask us. She didn't have much of an answer.
A couple of days ago, a for-sale sign appeared in the yard of John and Maude. Despite initial celebration, my family's reactions were mixed. "They're giving us their collapsible carport," my mom pointed out. "And Maude asked if we all made it safely home from the trips we took this month." My sister and I bemoaned the loss of their wireless internet. My dad had the most forboding: what if the next neighbors are worse? What if they play loud music, or have yappy dogs, or gang-member adolescent sons? What if they tear down John and Maude's little house and build a big one (the trend in our neighborhood) and we have to deal with the noise and ugliness of its construction for the next year? What if they're, as my sister is fond of saying, Republicans for Voldemort? It's becoming apparent that there could be evils worse than the evils we know. Only time will tell.
Picture this: we live in a lovely neighborhood full of lovely folks, most of whom voted for Kerry, many of whom have children and dogs and say hi as you pass and sit on their porches sipping wine in the summer twilight. Most people in our neighborhood would never get this kind of citation, but if they did, they would probably have a good idea of which of their neighbors was the tattletale. But we happen to live between two houses whose inhabitants were equally likely to have made the fateful call. So naturally, after grumbling about having to fix the lawn mower, our family conversations fell to the topic of which neighbors were the culprits.
Neighbor A, on the left side, as you're facing our house, was my mother's favored contender. Let's call her Lurlene for our purposes here. For the 12 years that we've lived here, she has lived alone, keeping the same daily routine, becoming older and dumpier year by year as the weight of time crashes upon her. She works in a security booth at some ritzy subdivision, but be not fooled--she doesn't really come across as the bouncer type. The church on our corner holds weekly AA meetings, and the attendees' cars have been known to spill over now and again onto the street. Lurlene's response was to put up a sign reading "No AA Parking" in front of her house. A few years ago, she cut down a big tree in her yard, which was the only beautiful thing about said yard in the first place, and replaced it with gravel on which to park her car. My dad has not spoken to her since.
Neighbors B, on the right side, shall hereby be called John and Maude. John is probably approaching 60 if he's not there already, and Maude is his mother, about whose age we will not venture a guess. John does some kind of work with computers in South Carolina, and Maude spends her time spying on her neighbors out the window and playing computer solitaire. She comes out to have a word with us if we or our visitors park in front of our house too close to her driveway, since it would be unsafe for her to back out (in her estimation). That's if she had somewhere to go, which seems a rather rare occurrence--but then, I don't spy on her as often as she probably does on me, so I'm not 100% sure. They have a can-crusher mounted on the side of their house outside my bedroom window, and they seem to get great joy from crushing about 50 cans a day at 7:00 in the morning. They have a greyhound that John walks once in the morning and once in the evening to a distance of about 4 houses away before returning home. Once, a tree limb from one of our trees was hanging over their side porch roof and threatening everything they hold dear. They told us we would have to pay for them to call someone to take care of it. My dad said he would do it. They said this was unacceptable for liability reasons. My dad said he wouldn't pay for someone else to do it. Finally, they said he could do it as long as he didn't set foot on their property, which proved impossible. He did end up standing on their property to remove the limb, a situation complicated by Maude's insistence on standing beside him for the entire process. They remind me of the ancient lady on the street where I grew up whose only pleasure in life was yelling at me when I ran around without shoes in the summertime.
My mom's arguments for Lurlene were strong. Lurlene is very picky about her yard, and keeps her grass trimmed within an inch of its life. She has just planted vegetables right next to our yard on her side of the fence, and she's probably mad that they're shaded by our vegetation. And she doesn't speak to us anymore. My mom says she'll say "Hi, Lurlene," and receive no response. I was not so convinced--John and Maude seemed just as strong contenders at least in the having-nothing-better-to-do department. They had a yard sale recently in which they had many items for sale for hundreds of dollars: camera lenses, darkroom equipment, a spotless guitar, computer hard drives. They came over and encouraged us to come to their yard sale. We went, but unfortunately I had neither the $700 nor the space to construct my own darkroom, so I contented myself with buying two Beach Boys records for $1 each. Before completing the sale they asked if we were sure we didn't want a camera or a hard drive. When the yard sale was over, they asked if we wanted to buy any more of their records (most of which were German Christmas music).
Within my family, we all tended to agree that the only way to know for sure was to confront them, but no one wanted to be the one to do it. Lurlene was considered the more likely candidate, and my dad refuses to talk to her. My mom decided it was surely her and set about hacking away all the vegetation on that side of the yard that could in any way offend. It took two days. She did some basic pruning of the other side as well, and two weeks later an inspector appeared at our doorstep, saying he was here to mow our grass. By this time, our grass had died. "We don't have any grass," my mother said. He admitted that this appeared to be the case. "In that case, I'm here to trim your border weeds," he offered. My mom said she had done that. He agreed, and they were in the yard trying to decide of there were any left that were complaint-worthy, when John, from his side of the fence, asked why we hadn't cleared the side for which we had received the citation (which, for the record, made no mention of sides).
The mystery was solved. At least, now, we could find out which weeds had been cause for complaint. In a striking instance of deja-vu, there were some that could not be cleared from our side of the property, but Maude initially insisted that we couldn't set foot on hers. She did offer a half-apology: regarding the citation, "I'm sorry we had to do that to you." My dad asked her why she didn't just ask us. She didn't have much of an answer.
A couple of days ago, a for-sale sign appeared in the yard of John and Maude. Despite initial celebration, my family's reactions were mixed. "They're giving us their collapsible carport," my mom pointed out. "And Maude asked if we all made it safely home from the trips we took this month." My sister and I bemoaned the loss of their wireless internet. My dad had the most forboding: what if the next neighbors are worse? What if they play loud music, or have yappy dogs, or gang-member adolescent sons? What if they tear down John and Maude's little house and build a big one (the trend in our neighborhood) and we have to deal with the noise and ugliness of its construction for the next year? What if they're, as my sister is fond of saying, Republicans for Voldemort? It's becoming apparent that there could be evils worse than the evils we know. Only time will tell.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Anniversary
Two years ago today
we went tubing down a river near Woodstock,
New England and Canada suffered the famous Blackout,
we ate Cheerios for dinner,
and I told Jodi that I loved her.
My life has never been the same.
And I'm so, so glad.
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