Diary Friday

When I was 14 years old, I wrote my autobiography.

I came across the small notebook this morning, a notebook filled with my cursive (cursive!! I never write in cursive anymore) ruminations on my childhood, my first memories, the games I played with my friends, my teachers, my crushes … I remember almost NONE of it. I was howling with laughter at points.

I am 14 years old at the time of writing, so my prose is extremely tragic, extremely serious – and yet I do seem to be making an attempt to create some kind of narrative.

It’s quite long – 50 pages or something like that – but I’ll just post some notable excerpts.

SHEILA’S LIFE STORY

(written at age 14)

The first house I remember living in is the big yellow house. It was in a really gritty part of town, right by the railroad tracks. We had no yard, and we lived on a dusty gravel circle with four other houses. In one big white house lived a couple I only vaguely remember, but they were my parents friends. Ed and Karen. My mother and Karen used to sit outside and play their guitars. I remember my brother and I used to tease Ed and laugh at whatever he said.

In a maroon house across from us lived Carol and Jim Francis. They have three sons, all terribly polite. Carol is tiny and blonde and giggly and loud and wears designer jeans and I love her. Her husband is quiet and serious. I think that Carol would make a good “Peter Pan”. She always gushes over me and acts like she really cares about what I say. I think she does, actually. She is very sincere.

In an olive-green house facing the highway (Ed: HIGHWAY! HA! It’s a 2-lane road.) lived our landlords. They had a big family that we admired. I remember running over yelling for Debby, their 8 year old daughter – to show her that I could tie my beloved red leather shoes. I was 3 or 4.

My brother and I would sneak in back of Ed and Karen’s house to sit in the shady cool bushes and watch the trains go by. My brother called the train “gn gn.” His baby-language. We never knew that we were seated in a bed of poison ivy.

Our lives were so simple then. I loved to read and build with blocks and listen to records. My favorite show on all of television was a cartoon called “Kimba: The White Lion”. I loved Kimba and his bravery and his sweet shyness. I remember sitting on our dark maroon velvet couch that was frayed and worn and comfy, and watching Kimba to my heart’s content. Every Sunday was “dump day”. Dad would go to the dump, with all our trash, and Brendan and I loved to come along and watch the swarming seagulls.

We loved to ride our bikes to feed the swans. Down the street there was a big pond with a swan family, we visited them regularly. The parents were beautiful and white, and they had all these grey cygnets following them around. Every winter we took walks on the blustery Scarborough Beach, writing in the sand, and posing on the rocks for my father’s camera.

I went to library school, which I adored, and I would ride along the sidewalks, past Peace Dale elementary school, past the old school-house which is now a furniture repair shop, past the “smelly factory” – with my mother beside me. I would be on my green tricycle, with the “Sheila” license plate, and we would arrive at the big turreted ivy-covered library. At the time, I had no idea that right around the corner was the mall and the cinemas and all these restaurants – where now I spend so much of my time. My world stopped at the Peace Dale Library.

On Third Grade:
Then came third grade. My teacher was Mrs. M, and I went in there terrified because I had heard a story that she literally had washed someone’s mouth out with soap. I doubt it was true, because she was very nice, even though she did have a slight moustache.

On the Rock Club:
We formed a Rock Club in 3rd grade. This is not as intelligent as it sounds. Basically, we would go out at recess behind a tree, and we would take stray rocks and smash them on the bigger rocks and peer at the broken pieces. Dee Dee, a girl who had always been so brilliant, smarter even than the smart kids, would be the “rock authority”. I laugh hysterically now about this little 8-year-old girl going from rock to rock saying, “That? Oh, that’s quartz.” Or “That must be a metamorphic rock.”

The Rock Club was eventually banned for fear that someone’s fingers would be crushed along with the quartz and the sedimentary samples.

On Fourth Grade Recess:
The entire class would get together to play “Land of the Lost”, our favorite show about people stuck in the world long ago with dinosaurs. There was one girl in the show, Holly, and I adored her. She was very boyish, with braids. She began my first fashion trend: jeans, flannel checkered shirt, suede wallabies, and long braids. But her braids were thin and long and I cried for a whole day because my braids came out thick and stubby.

Anyway, I insisted and demanded that I be Holly, but of course everyone else wanted to be her too, so there were at least six Holly’s. None of the boys wanted to play Marshall or Will. Too boring. So they all played Sleestaks. Sleestaks were creatures who looked like tall green scaly humans, and they were scared of light, and they always captured the 3 humans whenever they came near where the Sleestaks lived.

The girls (all the Hollys) used to get furious at the boys, because the moment we stepped out of our fort, the boys would run down, pick us up, and drag us off. We would be thrashing and screeching: “NO! This isn’t how it goes!! You have to WAIT until we get NEAR you! YOU’RE AFRAID OF LIGHT!”

We hated the boys for ruining the game.

On doing “Oliver” in the Sixth Grade:
Mrs. Shay announced that the play that year was going to be “Oliver”. I remember leaping out of my seat, arms in the air. We were all SO excited. We auditioned. Betsy almost knew she was going to be Nancy, because she heard Mrs. Shay say so, and I wanted so passionately to be the Artful Dodger that I thought I would be sick to my stomach. J didn’t know who she wanted to be. The day came. We all raced down the hall and slid into our seats. I remember my heart pounding as I sank low in my seat, suddenly bowled over by the fact that I might not get it. I almost burst out crying just thinking of it. I closed my eyes the entire time she was reading the cast list. Then she said: “Sheila – Artful Dodger” and I screamed at the top of my lungs. Then: “Betsy – Nancy”. And then: “J – Fagan.” I whirled around to gape at J, and J’s eyes bugged out, and she seemed like a ragdoll because she slumped down in her seat in shock. We were three best friends and we got three leading roles! When we were dismissed, row by row, Betsy was out first, then me. Then J came hurtling out of the room, arms open wide. We all screamed and threw our arms around each other and cavorted about in a wild circle. What a day!

On the 6th grade winter (the winter of Andrew Wright, of “spitball Valentine” fame):
Every day after school, I’d go home, get my skates, and tramp down to the swamp in the woods. The swamp had frozen over. The rest of my neighborhood friends were all down there, and every single day I would skate – from 3:30 to 5:30. Katy and Jen, my best friends since I was 5, would meet me down there. We called ourselves “The Three Muskateers”). Non-stop skating for two hours, and then we’d go back to Jen’s, for something warm to eat or drink.

Andrew would be there. He is a great skater. He even goes backwards, etc. It got to be a tradition that he would chase me. The boys would steal the girls hats, and we’d have to try and get them back. Andrew ALWAYS stole my hat – never stole another girl’s hat – and no matter how hard I tried, I could not get it back. I would zoom right towards him, and suddenly, in a flash, he would dash to the side and skate off the other way.

The little streams through the woods had also frozen – so we could skate along the ice through the snowy forest. It was amazing. Like a fairy-tale.

And then – there was the day of my greatest triumph. I stole Andrew’s hat. It was a black and yellow Bruin’s hat. It was an ecstatic moment of revenge. I tore off, clutching it, and he was right behind me. He’s much faster on the ice, so he passed by me, twirled around so he was facing me, and then stopped abruptly. I smashed right into him, we both teetered and fell, all tangled up in a mess. I was holding the hat under me, and he sat on me, trying to get it.

I wriggled away and zoomed off, skating down the ice path through the woods – I came around the corner and there was an enormous crowd of boys lying in wait for me. It was an ambush. They tackled me. I was on the bottom of the pile, laughing SO HARD – all of it was so good-natured, except one jerk who kicked me in the arm with his skate. A sharp sharp kick with the blade of his ice-skate.

Andrew, my hero, pulled me out from under the pile, and I skated off. I rolled up my sleeve and saw that my arm had a cut on it, and was turning purple.

The jerk then skated by me, and I put my foot out, made him trip, and then laughed outloud as I watched him topple into the reeds.

On Junior High:
My first year of junior high was very bad. I wasn’t in classes with any of my friends, I hardly ever saw them, and I became the class scapegoat. People laughed at me as I walked by, left mean notes in my locker, gave me crank calls, and snickered about my clothes. I didn’t even know these people, I didn’t talk to them, I never did anything to them. In grade school, having good clothes and a boyfriend wasn’t crucial, but suddenly these things were the most important things in life. But I kept wearing whatever I wanted, and everyone made fun of me. My life became worse and worse, and my grades dropped. I hated everyone and I dreaded school. School used to be a slice of paradise, filled with fun and friends, and it became a chore. I would fake sickness to stay home.

Losers made fun of me. Now I know that those people are losers, and the only reason they made fun of me is because they are LOSERS, and they have to find a scapegoat to make them feel better, and to make them not feel so much like LOSERS. But at the time, they stripped away my confidence. I hated my face. I looked in the mirror and saw ugliness.

Well, someday I will be a great actress or a rich archaeologist or a famous journalist, and I will look at those gutter scum, and I will smirk at them, and I will laugh at how they are still Losers. I cannot wait for that day. [Ed: Er … are archaeologists, in general, rich??]

On Junior High again:
I did make some new acquaintances that year – Kate, Beth, Meredith – these people are now new best friends to me. I sort of knew Beth and Kate because of church and Sunday school, but I had never met Mere before. I literally thought she was the best thing to ever hit this earth. She was tall and thin, and always wore jeans, and they always looked good on her. She seemed so breezy to me. That was my word for Mere. “Breezy”.

In 8th grade, Mere and I sat beside each other in Math, and we had the best time making fun of the teacher. He loved being macho. When he wrote on the board, he clenched and unclenched his fist, being all macho while he was writing on the board. He wore tight polyester pants, and he sometimes wore a bright orange shirt. One of his shirts had a discolored mark on the back that looked like a semi-colon and it remained there the entire year. He also wore shiny black shoes with buckles, so Mere and I called him “Mr. Pilgrim” behind his back. We wrote notes back and forth the entire period. Honestly. The ENTIRE PERIOD. Sometimes I would laugh so hard during class that I felt like I would suffocate. Math was the highlight of my day. Mere and I literally laughed about our teacher for the ENTIRE year.

At the end of the year, we were all outside playing softball, and I was bopping around in the outfield with my glove, and our Math teacher was up at bat (oh, what a macho man) and he, in his tight blue clinging pants, went tearing around the bases, being all macho, and suddenly – out of nowhere – he froze – and sort of sidled back to home, picked up his glove, and put it over his rear. All of us were staring at him like he was bonkers. Some of the kids near home plate started roaring with laughter, but none of us outfielders could see what had happened.

He started running towards the school, holding his glove over his butt. As he went past me, he hissed, “I split my pants.” I stood stock-still. I could hardly believe it – although why I was surprised I do not know: his pants were always way too tight.

Suddenly, Michele, the pitcher, who had heard his confession, started guffawing with laughter – and literally fell down onto the mound, writhing about in hysteria. Mass hysteria then followed. None of us could STAND IT that our macho teacher had split his pants in front of us.

On freshman year in High School:
I was in the Honors English program, I took Algebra, Introductory Physical Science (a disaster), French, European and Russian History, and Drama.

English was very hard. Our teacher was Ms. Preble. She insisted, quite strongly, on the Ms. Always corrected us. “Ms. Ms. Ms. Ms.” We used to make fun of that. “So did you hand in your paper to MS. Preble???” She was very much the Women’s Libber, which was a bit of a bore. She would drag in all these science and math and history books and point out the male authors, as though we were supposed to be all mad about that, and we would get more points taken off for not using “he/she, him/her” than if we actually spelled words wrong or whatever.

My French teacher, Mr. Woj (short for a long Polish name – we actually all just called him “Woj” – to his face) was the sweetest man in the world, but he did not teach us. We had to do everything on our own. His most common statement was: “Any questions? Good.” He was a nut. He chewed on his tie, or flipped it behind him like a cape. He pretended to smoke the chalk. He did splits while we were taking tests. He also hid under his desk as we walked in at the beginning of class, to see if we were talking about him.

I had a big problem with Intro to Physical Science. IPS. I was lost from Day One. I failed the first quarter, which was a living nightmare. It was just formulas and equations, and the entire course seemed pointless. Biology is useful. Obviously. But this?

Kate and I would say, “Oh, yes, it is very important to know the ratio of zinc to zinc chloride produced. It comes up at every cocktail party.” [Ed: Cocktail party? Sheila, you’re 14.]

I could not stand going in there, and we all hated the teacher with such a passion that it almost became a religion. Mr. B. He tried too hard, I think. I also don’t think he liked kids all that much. It was his first year teaching high school kids, and I think he just disliked us, and did not want to know us, and had no sympathy for us if we struggled in his class.

Also, he was a little wimp.

He tried so hard to emanate this learned college professor’s physique, and we found it sickening. Mr. B, you’re a high school Science teacher, not some professor from England or whatever. His ties were so starched that they stuck out straight from his neck, and he always wore boots. They were like hipster boots. (We all called them his “spurs”). He always looked tight, and cold, and he always carried a briefcase.

The problem with all of this is that it was just an act. You just could imagine him looking at himself in the mirror, all self-satisfied. Either that, or you could imagine him looking at himself in the mirror and crying like a little baby.

He was so unfair with us that parents began to complain. He didn’t know what he was doing. We would ask questions and he would give purposefully confusing answers. The entire time I was in there I felt trapped, and when the class was over, I sighed with relief for a C. It was a terrible experience.

Mr. B later had some kind of a nervous breakdown and had to quit his job. But he still showed up at school basketball games, screaming for our team as though they were the Boston Celtics. It was kind of sad.