It makes perfect sense on my blog to go from the State Department in the Cold War era to Diary Friday. Sure it does.
I came across this entry and … I had completely forgotten about this incident until now. Weird. That’s the good (and bad) thing about keeping a journal. These things don’t disappear. I was a junior in high school. Madly in love with DW (of course). This is from February – and there’s all this stuff about a religious retreat some of my friends and I had all gone on – that blew us AWAY. But then there’s this other incident … well, you’ll see what I mean.
FEBRUARY
Kate’s back. I can tell that the retreat really affected her. I remember how I was afterwards – so vulnerable – the big thing is – take off the masks! By the end of the weekend, I had no masks left – I’ve never (before that weekend, I mean) been able to cry easily. I want to but I wouldn’t. But over that weekend all that was shed – all of it – I was totally exposed. But – there it’s okay to be exposed. People love you, accept you – but at school – being that spread open is scary. I spent a lot of time just shying away frome veryone, like, “Oh, plase, if anybody talks to me, I’m going to burst out crying.”
I want to be on staff partly because of what it did for me and partly because I would love to be a part of helping someone see how much God loves them, help them discover it.
Kate was on such a spiritual high. She lifted me up!!!
We had bowling today. [hahahahaha Back to life … back to reality …]
DW wasn’t in school. [which is really all that matters]
What an eventful morning. Life is, indeed, a study of contrasts. My God, I can’t believe what happened to us this morning. First of all, it was pouring freezing biting rain. Kate and I walked down to the alleys. J. and April were taking this Math placement test and weren’t in gym. It was really desolate and windy and we got soaked but we talked about our retreat the whole way – what affected us most, what was best – it was great. It’s great to share it. But we got so cold and so wet – so when we got to the alleys, Mr. King asked some of the seniors who had driven down to drive us back. They said sure. Peachy. So we bowled.
Then it was time to go so we followed this group of seniors out to Helen’s van. There was Helen, Lisa S., Latanya M., Richard B., one other girl, and Kate and I. Oh yeah, Mr. King also told them to give a ride to Peter and Jeff. So we all piled in the van. Kate and I sat in the back across from each other. Before we left, Richard turned around to us and said, “We trust that this will be kept a secret but we’re all adult upperclassmen, and we are gonna smoke a senior joint if it’s all right with you.” All the seniors burst out laughing, and Lisa started digging through her purse. Kate and I just sat there, faces expressionless. What were we supposed to do? Lisa lit the joint and they all passed it around. Helen blasted the radio and we started off.
Soon the van really stunk. Diary – can you imagine what I felt like? Sort of alienated – just because of the circumstances – but it was more than that. It was the differences between the moment and the weekend. The music was so loud that Kate and I were quietly commenting on this to each other as we zoomed along.
First of all, we didn’t go straight back to school. Helen drove around Wakefield for a while. Every time she took another long route, Kate and I would quickly glance at each other and then look away, because otherwise I would have burst out laughing. Kate’s face! We made a pretense of studying French but shrieks of laughter were bubbling inside me – all because – it was just so bizarre that – that they feel they need to do that – and I have no interest in it. I had spent the weekend praying, crying, hugging my friends, and now? We were zooming around in the back of the van with kids we didn’t know as everyone got high. Kate was saying later, “My life is so full right now …” In the van, she would glance at me and say, “This is unbelievable – the contrast.”
They asked if we wanted some. I just shook my head. Richard shrugged and turned back. Kate just licked her lips, closed her eyes – I snorted, trying to bite back my laugh. As we zoomed through town, farther and farther away from school, Kate reached up to touch the little cross pinned to her sweater. She whispered, “Sheila” to get my attention, and I saw her hold it – and it was so weird – it was like I could suddenly feel Him there – or something was there – holding my hand, guiding me – I could feel Him there in that crazy smelly van filled with pot smoke. I saw her cross and said, “I wish I had one” and she smiled and said, “You don’t need one. You have one. Even here.”
Helen drove crazily around at this breakneck speed and I just sat there, worried about missing my next class, quietly waiting for it to end. I started getting a headache.
The whole experience was funny, in a way. We finally got back to school. When we got out of the van, Kate and I were like, “Did that just happen?”
Diary, it wasn’t just another experience. It was weird and confusing. I felt so much during the ride, and I felt as though we were in another time zone or time dimension or something. Maybe it felt even more strange because of the spiritual high – so the world looks different anyway. I also felt so close to Kate. We were bonded together. We were holding hands spiritually.
See, the thing is I’m not saying the experience was so upsetting, etc. That world is so removed from mine. I’d even forgotten it existed, and I have so little need for that – and for peer pressure – I’m removed from that too. When they asked me if I wanted some, I could have squirmed inside, felt stupid, and said, “Yes” because I was afraid they’d make fun of me. But it was like – No problem. I say No if I don’t want to. If they give me shit about it then they deserve to be shot. [hahahahaha]
What a cheery way to start the day. Kate and I agreed not to tell anyone, but the whole day we both could not stop laughing at the image of the two of us bouncing around in the back of that van filled with pot-smoke – as we drove AWAY from school. It was hysterical. In French, Kate pointed out the 13th vocab word to me: “les drogues” (drugs) – and we both just laughed.
I wasn’t scared or worried – I passively took it all in, didn’t freak out – it was all just very weird. I can’t put my finger on what I was feeling because it was all so jumbled up. Very weird character-building experience.
You know what I was honestly seriously wondering? If DW had been there, and they had offered him a ride – how would he have reacted? [This is, indeed, the most pertinent question that one needs to ask in such a situation. What Would DW Do? WWDWD.] God, am I curious! I don’t think he would have smoked – but would he have? What would he have done? There are so many things about him I can’t even guess. The whole thing was strange enough without having him sprawled in the back of the van too. Just … what would he have been like? What would his thoughts have been?
This is going to keep me awake!!! [Oh, please don’t sleep over this …]
So that was the beginning to a very mixed-up day. I think it is odd that this all happened today of all days. I feel different somehow. It’s subtle.
Oh wait – one more thing before I go to sleep [thought you said you would lie awake wondering WWDWD?] While I was after school for SK Pades, a boy called my house and asked for me. [It is impossible to show the four underlines that I have under that sentence] Siobhan answered it. She didn’t know where I was so she said I was at work. And he said he’d call me there. Now who could it have been? It must have been for Mum. But what if it wasn’t? The crucial phone call of my life. It’s just a mystery. Why would he say he’d call me at work? What’s happening? False alarm, probably.
Sometimes, when the phone rings for me, Mum’ll call me and whisper significantly, “It’s a male.” Involuntarily, I will feel so giddy that I want to throw up, and so excited I want to run away, and I’ll answer the phone: “Hello?” “Hey, Sheila – it’s Bobby – can I get a ride to rehearsal?”
I fall in a faint on the floor.
The story of my life.
Gas, grass or ass, no one rides for free.
Well, I guess the old saying isn’t true.
Great story Sheila. Thanks for sharing it.
Didn’t I refer to stoners in some other diary entry as “spacey dorks”? hahahahaha This was my close encounter of the third kind with a real live spacey dork contingent.
oh wow! and of course, I cannot remember who Helen is…
Mere – I just emailed you Helen’s last name
Happening? St. Dominic Savio?
Even just saying the name “Dominic Savio” feels me with so many memories!! Cold rainy weekends spent there … setting up our little makeup mirrors in our dorm rooms – you know the kind, where you can check out your makeup in “nighttime light”, “bright sunlight”, “fluourescent” … I wonder if we had a setting for “Catholic retreat lighting”.
I don’t know why I remember those damn makeup mirrors – but we all had them, and we all packed them with us to go on our weekend retreats. hahahahaha
When they asked me if I wanted some, I could have squirmed inside, felt stupid, and said, “Yes” because I was afraid they’d make fun of me. But it was like – No problem
So the “Just Say No” campaign actually worked, even though it was derided at the time. Then again I’m not sure I would have been as strong as you. I had an “out” that I used during the end of my junior year and all my senior year ‘cus I was taking physicals and other tests to go to a military academy or ROTC. Since they tested for drugs, I claimed I couldn’t take a toke… By the time, I stopped having to take random drug tests (well into my 30s) I really wasn’t interested in experimenting.
I don’t think it had anything to do with Just Say No (which I think was rightly derided, actually.) I mean – I can’t remember being influenced by the Just Say No thing – I just didn’t want to do drugs. Never did. I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke (“what do you do? Subtle innuendoes follow, must be somethin’ inside”..) … didn’t have sex – I just didn’t want to “go down a bad path”. Peer pressure, for whatever reason, NEVER worked on me.
I never let anyone talk me into doing anything I didn’t want to do. EVER. I was immune to it. I cannot explain why.
I would say it had more to do with my faith in God and wanting to be PRESENT in my life (which is what the retreat was all about – stripping away our social masks, our fears, and being present to one another) – than any anti-drug campaign.
In thinking more about it – and trying to figure out why I just would not succumb to peer pressure – it occurs to me suddenly that I think one of the main influences on me, in terms of drugs – was the “anonymous diary” called Go Ask Alice which I somehow read (SO INAPPROPRIATE) at age 11. I don’t know why I read it … but I did. And it scared the living CRAP out of me.
Alice was a “good kid”, she got good grades, and … she fell in with a bad crowd at age 14 or whatever … and started taking drugs … having sex … and ended up dead of an overdose.
I have no idea if it was a real diary or not – but I read it when I was in the fuckin’ 6th grade – and it gave me nightmares. I would say that SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF A SMALL CHILD is a pretty effective don’t do drugs message.
Way better than “just say no” which strikes me as simplistic and silly. It stops – right where the campaign should actually start. Bah.
Give your kids Go Ask Alice to read. When they’re 10. They’ll never do drugs!!
Wow – I did not know that story! I love the Bobby line too –
Betsy – I guess Kate and I kept our promise not to tell anyone!!!
See you Sunday!
I never knew that story either! And who the hell is Helen? And all the other stoners? Was Richard B. my friend Kelli’s brother?? Sounds about right for him. And how funny is it that I just emailed you about bowling and DW (WWDWD?) when I hadn’t even read this diary Friday yet!!
“who the hell is Helen?”
I am howling!
I am also truly amazed that Kate and I apparently kept a secret. That seems … so bizarre! Like I feel like I totally would have cracked at one point and blurted out the whole dumprat tale!!
Member when Richard B. dressed as a pregnant nun for Halloween? That was so BAD back then! Anyhoo… he went on to become completely drug and alcohol addicted and living IN A BOX on the streets of Miami. His mother literally DROVE her car up and down the strip, looking for him, got him the help he needed and now he is clean. Got a great job- makes a ton of money, completely sober. The funniest thing of all in this whole story is the fact that he is a born-again, holy roller kinda guy now. Who woulda thunk it, all those years ago? Sheila and Kate, praying in the back of the smoke filled van morphs into Richard B. praying in Florida…
beth … i can barely type … i am laughing too hard …
hahahahahahaha
“praying in the back of the van” HELP – I AM GUFFAWING IN PUBLIC
well, good for him! And I totally remember the pregnant nun. He was a scary guy. Glad to hear he’s gotten his act together. But I’m still laughing over here ….
What can I say?? Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction! Richard B. becomes a bible-thumpin’ clean and sober southern gentleman…I go bowling at the same alleys as we were visiting in gym…
I totally could have written this diary entry. Except that I was such a good girl that no one would have dared even pull out a joint around me. I didn’t even see one until I was 24 years old.
Even more like the teenage me, your little obsession with DW creeping into everything. I remember being totally bummed when my crush wasn’t at school, how it completely made the day not worth it. And always asking myself, “what would he do in this situation,” I presumed to know a lot about him when I totally didn’t. I should pull out my teenage diary one of these days. Although I don’t think I’d have the guts to post it. I was on a serious L. Maud Montgomery kick at that point and thought I WAS Emily. My writing is laughable, all about romantic season changes, etc. Bleh.
Oh, Sheila! (I got here late today.) I remember a couple of my church retreats and feeling so different and almost not of this earth — if that makes sense — that I wouldn’t really even share it with my parents. It was too intense and personal. He was RIGHT THERE, you know? And to speak of it made it less, somehow. I remember feeling in such an in-between kind of space, I guess, not “here,” not “THERE,” but closer to “THERE” than I’d felt in a long time and I didn’t want anyone or anything upsetting my delicate balance with God. It was just for us, me and Him.
So I’m crying from the aching sweetness of that story.
But then … I was just howling at some of the rest of it: “It must have been for Mum. But what if it wasn’t? The crucial phone call of my life. It’s just a mystery. Why would he say he’d call me at work. What’s happening? False alarm, probably.”
I LOVE THAT LITTLE PARAGRAPH! Such a perfect expression of a high school girl’s inner roller coaster. You’re so up and down right there. That “What’s happening?” just kills me.
And this (quoting you back to you, again!): ” …. I will feel so giddy that I want to throw up and so excited I want to run away, and I’ll answer the phone: ‘Hello?'”
I don’t know why, but when I read it, I paused for a split second after that Hello and it just seemed extra-hysterical to me … like you’d be SO giddy and SO excited that you’d ACTUALLY answer the phone with “Hello?”
Coulda just been the way I read it. But then you have your little exchange with Bobby and “fall in a faint on the floor.”
Too much. The laughing, crying pain of these is TOO much.
Don’t stop.
tracey – definitely a very RAW experience of God’s love – which I think is one of the reasons why the pot-smokers (hahahaha – I was so young!!!) didn’t faze me. I felt protected or something. But I do remember going back to school that Monday and feeling like a quivering little one-celled amoeba creature or something – really raw!!!
And yeah – that “what’s happening” quote kills me, too … hahahahahaha Like: uhm, what’s happening is is that it was probably a call for your mother (we have the same name). But I’m all a-twitter – ‘what’s happening?????”
hahahaha
Jessica – hahahahaha about Emily! I had the SAME experience – especially because that second book in the series is mostly entries from her journal. I read that book – and I, too, can see the influence in my own journal – suddenly talking about nature, and pontificating on the sunset …
You and I are kindred spirits obviously!!