The Annual

The Annual

I really don’t know how they do it. What is it about high school kids? They can make each other feel so bad about themselves? No matter what you are it is never good enough for the in-crowd. Even if you are part of the in-crowd. The story is timeless and exhausting.

Junior high was typical. Awkward. Pimply. Chubby. You name it and we were all some or all of it. I guess that I was chubbier than all of the others because in the eight grade a very popular group of boys got angry with me for picking on a friend so one of them decided to get even with me.
I noticed that on the way to band class after lunch that the most popular kids were hanging out outside of the door to class. As I turned the corner, I saw a rendering of myself as a killer whale stretched out across 2 sheets of notebook paper! The caption read ,” See Seaworld of Texas’ latest attraction… Amu!” I was devastated to say the least. Everyone thought that this was hysterical except me and the band director. The artist and I now exchange Christmas presents. You guessed it! My sister married the guy! Turns out he was kind of on the outskirts of the crowd, too. He was trying to be impressive. He is just the best thing that ever happened to my sister, no kidding. Pretty creative too.

My confidence level after junior high was somewhere right above leper and right below the kids who they use on the before pictures on those infomercials for acne treatments. Let’s just say that I shed a few pounds the summer before high school started. I was never really thin, but I was NOT FAT. Believe me, I know what fat is, I got that covered now at 31. Anyway, back to 1989( does anyone remember all of those Z. Cavaricchi pants with the pleats in the front? Nobody looked thin in those!) those kids that I was in school with made me feel like I didn’t matter. How is that possible? How do we let someone else do that to us? Hell, who knows. There was one girl in particular. I will call her Tracy. She ruled our class with an iron hand. We lived in a small rural Texas town and there was not a lot to do but hang out with each other in town, ride around on the “drag”, or hang at somebody’s house. If she found out that one of her friends was hanging out with me she would lose her mind! I am talking screaming temper tantrums! Hissy fits! Mind blowing anger that should not come from a 15 year old Texas girl. She would threaten not to let anyone else in the in crowd be your friend either if you didn’t follow her “rules”. The sad thing is that this method worked for her for 4 long years. She was popular, but only by demand, her demanding the she be popular. The funny thing was that when it came to things that were voted on, she never won. In our high school secret ballots were her undoing. Never to be a Prom Queen or Homecoming Queen.
Tracy was sly. On those days that you slept through the alarm and found yourself running so late that you just threw something on and the hair just found its way into a ponytail and all of your make-up was applied while driving to school and smoking a cigarette and everyone on Earth could tell she’d compliment you. Ha,ha. Slick bitch. The days that you took your time and primped and applied make-up with the hand of a pro, she would cut you to the quick. “Those pants make you look fat.” “What line did you get in the day God gave out boobs?” “The lipstick color makes you look like a hooker.” I would never hear the compliments from everyone else, only the put downs from Tracy.
I did manage to make friends that were older than I was who did not care for Tracy. They were Seniors. They took me everywhere with them. I was so lucky to have those kinds of friends to do things with outside of school. Of course I didn’t have any classes with them, that was a real bummer.

Now as I sit here and read this story it is not going where I wanted it to. I have this whole story that I want to tell. I just found my annual from my sophomore year of high school, 1990-1991. I was looking over it while riding in the car with my husband. I realized that the class a year before me has lost 5 members that I am aware of because I knew all of them and deeply cared about a few. I was thinking about how sad it was and then I noticed how Micheal, Clynt, & Josh, were all over it. They were in everything or into everything. Snapshots, group photos, awards, projects…you get the picture. Those guys were really living life. I know this, but looking at the annual made me remember. Their lives were cut short, but while they were here they were really living. Then I begin to notice the pictures of myself. I am not in that many. I didn’t join the clubs that I wanted to because of who was in them and what they might think about me. I took the easy classes so I would not have to be around the kids that I thought didn’t like me. Then I really look at one of the pictures of me in the hall with four other popular girls from my class. I am not different. I am not fatter, taller, flatter chested, fuller chested, prettier, or uglier. I am just one of the girls. It was a real turning point in the way I’ve always felt about high school and about me. I am what I am . Nobody ever should have had the power to make me feel like less than a person and no one ever will again. No matter what. The rest of my life will be full of snap shots, group shots, awards…but these will be for my scrapbooks. The books that I make for my sons. I want them to know that their mom was really involved in their lives and in their community. No matter what she looks like or who else is involved. My husband said that maybe today really is my turning point instead of some day back then. I think that maybe he’s right. Do you ever just feel different? I do. I look at those photos in that book now and see a lot of people who ditched the old hometown. I don’t see many of them anymore and I don’t really care to. We didn’t even have a 10 year reunion. That’s sad. Too many of us were never really true friends in the first place. Do you want to know who ended up being my one true friend? Amu boy, my brother-in-law, Matthew. I wouldn’t trade him for the world.