The beginning of the Up-side (Part 3: 9th Grade)

Freshman year, 1992.

After two years of whining and complaining to my mom about how awful it was being in junior high and how snobby and mean-spirited the girls could be and two years of my mom reassuring me that in high school I would finally find people with whom I could fit in, after two years of waiting for that horrible right of passage to be over, I entered the ninth grade.

This was the year they decided to go high-tech and put digital photos on our ID’s. It made us all look like we had run around with black Sharpies in our noses right before pictures were taken.

And you know what? My mom was right. Sure, there were still those mean girls trying to rule the roost and be self-important, but for every one of them, there were 15 kids that didn’t care about them at all. I hung out with kids who went to the same church as me. I met kids in my honors classes that cared about academics as much as I did. I joined clubs and met people with similar interests. I played basketball and ran track and made friends with people who even had the same schedule as me. I finally did find a niche that I fit into and people who not only accepted me for me, but were also a lot like me.

Midway through my ninth grade year, I met Ryan. A girlfriend of mine was actually the one interested in him, so I perpetuated typical freshman behavior and ran over and let him know oh-so-subtly (like a Mack truck) that my friend liked him. It turns out, he didn’t so much care for my friend as he did talking to me. Looking back, maybe this wasn’t such a great “friend” move on my part, but I continued to talk to him and we got to know each other over the next few weeks. He was a junior to my freshman, a self-assured 16 year old to my innocent and meek 14. (Yeah, at 14, innocent still fit.) At first blush, I wasn’t so into him being that he had this long hair that had earned him the nickname, “Jesus.” But in getting to know him, it became part of who he was – the boy who would soon hold the title of “my first boyfriend”. After those first few weeks, we were inseparable.

And that’s it. To sum up, freshman year was a time for me to realize that just because you’re different (me = the poster child for different) doesn’t mean you’re going to be alone the rest of your life. Oh, and that boys, specifically one boy, really rocked.

It gets worse before it gets better (Part 2: 8th Grade)

This is probably my most unfortunate school picture. As you can tell in all of my other portraits, school photo or no, I have no problem with smiling. I really like to smile. At the time, my 3 years of braces had only been over a short while and my teeth were still smooth and shiny and seemingly new. My parents and grandparents constantly harped, "Smile! We paid for those teeth! We own your mouth! You owe us a lot of smiles for years to come!" But this particular photographer decided I didn't smile enough. No, he had to try extra hard to make sure I smiled. Maybe he was new. Maybe if he knew me better, he would have known I was an affable type who aimed to please. But he had to go and crack jokes and make me laugh. One flash of the camera and it was all over - no do-overs in case I blinked or anything. That's what picture make-up day (a few weeks later) was for.

A few weeks later, right before the picture make-up day that I was determined to attend (I will smile but not laugh - they cannot make me laugh!) we got a phone call that my mom's father was dying. He had cancer, the type you get when you spend years in the Navy handling asbestos without gloves, before they knew how awful it was for a person and what exposure to it did to their body. We knew he had this cancer, but we didn't know how long it would take for it to take him away from us. The last time my mom had visited her father, he had transformed from the robust, lively person he always was to a feeble, old man who had to wear suspenders on his pants just to keep them up. When we got the phone call, we knew he didn't have much time left.

I decided to live with the bad school picture and accompany my mom and my grandmother up to see my grandfather. 3 generations of women: My maternal grandmother (whom I was named after), my mother and me. My grandmother was once married to this grandfather - they were high school sweethearts. But 3 children, an affair, and an alleged pregnant mistress (a hoax) later, the union ended in divorce. My grandparents had made an uneasy peace since then... mostly when my grandfather admitted he had made a huge mistake. My mom (a daddy's girl) had a really hard time with the split, dealing with abandonment issues. Not only did her parents divorce, but while her two older brothers remained with their father, she and her mom moved to Alaska - several states away. I had grown up separate from all of this extended family drama, but we still visited these people on family vacations. I knew my grandfather from week-long summer and winter holidays and through birthday cards in the mail, with $5 or $10 stuck inside the envelope. I wasn't particularly close to him, but I had fond memories.

It was October when we made the drive up to Portland, OR from San Diego. I remember sitting in the back seat of an 80's model Toyota Celica hatchback snuggled under a blanket, glad I didn't have to go to school for the week. I also remember having to put chains on the tires when going through the snow in the mountains, my waist-length hair dragging through the dirty brown water and slush in the gutters as I was under the car putting the chains on and later untangling them from the axle.

The week was a blur. I remember visiting with a lot of relatives as they came through the house to see my grandfather one last time. I remember quiet talks as my mom or my grandmother huddled over his skeletal form - making peace, I guess. I remember all the women relatives saying they needed a break from the stress of the situation and going to the mall for the afternoon. As we were in JCPenney or Sears or some big department store, my grandmother called home to check in and got the news that he had just died. She crumpled into my aunt's arms, my mom hugged me tightly, everybody crying. Before we left, my mom bought the two of us matching bracelets with our initials on them, tying us to each other and to that moment.

The funeral was the next day. I remember that I didn't have any black clothes, so I borrowed my an aunt's black dress and shoes. I got them muddy playing with my cousins, but no one seemed to mind. The adults talked and laughed and reminisced and as the evening wore on, I heard so many different stories of my grandfather - things I never knew.

By the end of the trip, I was so much closer to all of these people that I had previously only known from a distance. I have cousins and aunts and uncles who have all kept in touch and with whom I have grown closer over the years. I guess I have my grandfather to thank, one last time.

By the way, my mom never did order school pictures again.

Nostalgia - My school years (Part 1: 7th Grade)

With my high school reunion only a couple months away and a plethora of schoolmates coming out of the woodwork, I dug through some pictures and brought a few in to share. (This was also inspired by Adam's school picture show and tell.)


Things I could barely tolerate remember about 7th Grade:

I schlepped computer stuff for my grandfather's computer repair business all summer to earn money for school clothes. My brothers did not work that summer AND still were outfitted with new duds by the time September rolled around.

I played basketball at the park near my grandparent’s house in my free time. I was 14 years old, a girl, and was good enough to not be picked last. Happiness is...

I got my braces off this year.

Somehow, (I say somehow because I was not one of the popular kids) I was not only nominated, but also selected as one of the princesses for the Valentine’s Dance “court”. Those popular kids recognized I didn’t belong and were as puzzled as I by the fluke that had allowed my presence. My “prince” escort refused to walk up to the front of the room with me until he came up with a Plan B – to rush me up there as fast as he could to show that he really didn’t want to be there and just wanted to get it over with.

I got good grades and was “teacher’s pet” in most of my classes. (Probably one of the reasons I was not a popular kid.) I hated when some of my fellow classmates rebelled and made our substitute teachers cry. Usually when the regular teacher came back, we were all punished.

Our school colors were yellow and black and our mascot was a… bumblebee? Hornet? Wasp? Some insect with a stinger.

My P.E. teacher had a round shape and skinny legs; she looked just like a bumblebee when dressed in our gym uniform.

I had a small group of close friends made up of both boys and girls. At the end of the year, one of those friends signed my yearbook saying, “[He] would have liked me as more than a friend if only I had bigger tits.”

We learned how to deep-fry donuts in home ec, use bandsaws in shop, and balance a checkbook in math class.

On rainy days, I painted a lot of abstract watercolors when P.E. was held inside.

I was tormented a lot by the popular girls' leader and her henchmen. Trying to fit in, I left the house in one knee-length skirt and changed into a short, tight, mini-skirt when I got to school. This queen bee and her cronies came up and surrounded me, asking why I had changed and that she thought it looked terrible. Ughh. (Self-esteem? What's that?)

My math teacher's name was Garr and he had hair like Elvis. Old Elvis.