Here, for Diary Friday, is a tragi-comic rendering of a Sadie Hawkins Dance (did you all have those, too?) in my junior year of high school.<\/p>\n
I read it, and thought: Jesus. Thank God high school had an end. ICK.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sadie Hawkins Day. Pretty good. I wore jeans, wallaby’s, a huge flannel shirt of Dad’s, I painted freckles on my face, wore a straw hat \u0096 only to find that almost NO ONE else dressed up!!! A few did, but not many. I looked like a jackass.<\/p>\n
Assembly was fun. I had my camera. I took pictures of the sack race relays, wheelbarrow races. We’ve got some great kids in our class. Got a great picture of Keith standing there in his Blues Brothers sunglasses. And I took one of Donny McNulty, the cutest little NUT of our class \u0096 riding around on his unicycle, screaming, “WE’RE NUMBER ONE!” That’s when I love school the most. It felt so \u0096 school-y, and together-ness, and everyone is so nice and normal \u0096 not like the bitches and assholes they normally are. [Ed: Oh, shit, that makes me laugh. The truth comes out! “Everyone is so nice except when they’re being total assholes.” HAHAHA<\/i>]<\/p>\n
Watching the popular kids bouncing and falling around in the sacks, and the whole football team dressed up as cheerleaders, with little blue and white uniforms, wigs, makeup, and HUGE boobs. [Ed: Damn, you’d never get away with that now. Some overly-sensitive girl would feel that this was “hostile” and made her feel “uncomfortable” and the parents would sue the school because their delicate daughter couldn’t take a joke<\/i>.] They all came bounding out, with their pom-poms, Richard Beatrice took a made flying lip and did FOUR back-flips across the gym. They did a cheerleading routine together, and it was absolutely hysterical. I couldn’t breathe.<\/p>\n
There was a pie-eating contest, too. Pumpkin pie. It was so nauseating. Poor Mitchell Healy, our pie-eater, has a cold so he had to eat and breathe with his mouth.<\/p>\n
The seniors won.<\/p>\n
Crissy Judge, the cutest, nicest, normallest girl in our class, I really love her \u0096 was Mitchell’s own personal cheerleader. Mitchell, looking really sick, came back to our bleachers, and she pounded him on the back, braids bobbing, crying out, “All right, Mitch! Good job!!” It was so fun.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, I did go to the dance. I didn’t feel like staying home alone, so I called up Kate and she had decided to go to the dance with Beth and Regina. I started to get psyched. I hadn’t been to a dance for so long. And for the first time, I was nervous<\/u>. I felt my heart pound, as I put on makeup.<\/p>\n
The gym was all decked out with clotheslines strung with overalls, hankys, flannel shirts, there were piles of pumpkins, and haystacks, everyone was wearing cowboy hats, boots, fringed shirts. I felt very out of place being alone. I felt like I was the only person who went stag to the dance.<\/p>\n
Then I saw Kate and Pilar, our Spanish exchange student, and Beth, and a lot of people had gone alone, turns out.<\/p>\n
I didn’t really dance that night, maybe I danced to five songs. Really, I just talked with people, and it went by so fast. Suddenly Kate said, “There’s only half an hour left!!” Pilar and I were standing there, talking, and Jimmy McNulty came over and said to Pilar, “Would you like to dance with me?” She did \u0096 and that moment struck me as so nice. Nothing like that would ever happen to me, probably, but he was so nice! It seemed like asking her to dance was so easy for him.<\/p>\n
John was there. [Ed: I think I am referring to a guy I was madly in love with, from afar, having never spoken to him, ever<\/i>.] HE WENT STAG! Oh, well. Fuck him. [Ed: That may be my favorite couple of sentences in this journal entry. Thrilling excitement: “HE WENT STAG”. Then immediate apathy: “Oh well”. Apathy turns to rage: “Fuck him”<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
Brian was there, cute cute, overalls, cowboy hat, straw in his mouth. It was during a slow song, I spent most of the dance with Kate, but she had gone to talk to someone, so I was by myself on the bleachers. Brian and Moira McCool (his date) were sitting at the other end, talking, and Moira got up to get a drink or something, and Brian stood up, it was kind of dark, he looked enormous to me, I mean, because I was sitting down. And he came in my direction, I thought he would pass right by me, but then I realized he came and sat next to me, his big feet stretched out in front of him, leaning his elbows back on the seat behind.<\/p>\n
He sighed, “Drab. Drab.” [Ed: Now that strikes me as very amusing, being all bitter and “over” the un-happening Sadie Hawkins Dance. Love it. I am not sure who “Brian” is. I’m thinking Brian Records, one of my brother’s best friends. Brian would be 14 years old, at this point<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
I said, “It’s drab, especially for us stag-people.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah!”<\/p>\n
I grinned over at him. “Did she ask you?”<\/p>\n
He nodded. “Yeah.” A silence passed. Then he shrugged. “Well, dinner was good, at least.”<\/p>\n
(The girls always treat the guys to dinner before. It’s a tradition.)<\/p>\n
I laughed, and he pulled himself up, grinned at me, and walked off. I started breathing again. No, I am only kidding. <\/u> [Ed: I have no idea what I am talking about here. Did I have a crush on him? No idea<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
Kate and I talked for a long time. She was considering asking Jan to dance, a terrific terrific person. I said, “Go, Kate. He is so neat.”<\/p>\n
She sighed. “I know \u0085 but \u0085 I don’t think I could stand being turned down again.”<\/p>\n
I know!! But she did ask him, and they danced for a while, and after they were done, she and I talked. She said, “Well, I guess he didn’t feel like dancing anymore.”<\/p>\n
I said, “Well, at least you danced with him. He didn’t turn you down\u0097”<\/p>\n
“No, Sheila! I am so SICK of this happening to me! I really am. I don’t just want one dance with someone. I want something to happen!”<\/p>\n
For the rest of the dance, I madly searched for Brian. It would be so easy to ask him to dance cause I know him so well. No heart attacks or long meditations. I could just go up and say, “Are you tied down with Moira, or do you want to dance?” [Ed: Jeez, Sheila, I hope you could be a bit more tactful than that<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
But just my luck, he had left early. Damn.<\/p>\n
And depression began to seep in almost immediately, and I battled it off. I did. I tried to fight it off. Because I am depressed altogether too much. It was the end of the dance, everyone was getting their coats \u0096 I felt this Melancholy. I’m fed up.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, I felt so fed up. Jimmy McNulty, and say, “Want to dance?” I’m 16! No one has ever asked me to dance. what the hell is wrong with me? I’ve never slow-danced with anyone, except for Kevin See, and that doesn’t count. [Ed: For my friends who know Kevin See, this will make total sense. I laughed out loud when I read that sentence<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
Kate saw me, I looked at her and said, “I hate my life right now.”<\/p>\n
Firmly, she took my arms and shook me. We looked at each other for the longest time. She said, “You do NOT. You have all of us, we love you.”<\/p>\n
I sighed, “I know, but\u0097”<\/p>\n
She dropped my arms and nodded, saying softly, “I know. I know. It’s not enough.” [Ed: We were 16 years old, and we were talking like tragic women of the world, who have been around the block a couple times. However, it was deadly serious, so I can’t mock myself too much<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
“It really isn’t enough anymore. But you know what, Kate? I would NEVER drop my friends for any boyfriend. I need my friends more than I need any boyfriend. But still \u0096 having a steady guy \u0096 it just would make all of this, and everything else, so much richer!”<\/p>\n
When will it happen? It just seems like life is so much easier for those gorgeous popular girls.<\/p>\n
See what going to one stupid dance does to me?? Dances are hell. Except for the toga dances. I love the toga dances. [Ed: Hey, a girl has standards<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
So anyway. There it is. My first Sadie Hawkins dance. it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Wow, you can see that I am brimming over with excruciating endless ecstasy, huh? No really, though. I was surprised. For one of the first times, I didn’t go home and cry myself to sleep. [Ed: Ouch. I don’t remember doing that. That’s horrible<\/i>.]<\/p>\n
By the way \u0096 I’m getting contacts in 2 weeks!!!!!!!!!!! [Ed: Sorrow, apparently, doesn’t last long when one is 16<\/i>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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