Lawyerish

Pass It On

When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to be old enough to go to summer camp.  I read Yours Till Niagara Falls, Abby about 85 times, and dreamed about long sun-filled days of canoeing and lanyard-making, afternoons of pillow fights and letter writing in a homey bunk, nights of campfires and ghost stories and sneaking out to raid the counselors' fridge. 

Lots of people I know went to those ritzy sleepaway camps in the Northeast, the ones with "cabins" with enough wattage for 15 hairdryers to run simultaneously, sleek motorboats for waterskiing and parasailing, and SAT prep classes between dressage lessons.  The first time I told my husband, who had attended just such a camp, about my own summer camp experience, he looked at me as though my parents had shipped me off to Stalag 17 for the summers.  Suffice it to say, if we'd wanted to waterski or parasail at my camp, we'd have had to get about 40 girls into a canoe and have them paddle like rowers in a galley trying to avoid walking the plank. 

My first sleepaway experience, when I was around 8 or 9, was at Camp Pine Valley, a Girl Scout camp at a heavily forested site somewhere in middle Georgia.  I only went for a week, but my memory of it has expanded that week into a several-month-long slog to hell and back.  Aside from not having to subsist on bugs or be confined to crouch-tight spaces for hours on end, I am fairly certain that this camp also served as a Survival School for the armed forces.  It had a lake and some hiking trails, but there the resemblance to my idyllic camp experience ended.

Girl Scouts, incidentally, was an ideal activity for my, uh, methodical nature -- the hierarchical structure (Brownies, Juniors, Girl Scouts), the clearly articulated expectations and rewards (sell X number of cookies, get a stuffed penguin!), and the ever-so-stylish uniforms (who doesn't look good in high-waisted green polyester pants?).  I loved to page through the Badge Book and go through the checklists for each badge -- sometimes I would find that I'd earned one without even meaning to, or that I could add another by completing one or two simple tasks.  The goal, clearly, was to obtain as many as possible.  That I had to wear two sashes to contain all of my badges was a major point of pride.  And probably why I was shunned by society for years to come. 

Camp Pine Valley was divided into three units, each holding maybe 20 or 30 girls in a hillside grouping of canvas-topped platform tents huddled around a campfire and a meeting hut, and an outhouse flanked by open-air, cold-water showers.  Oh, yes.  It was luxurious.

The first day of camp, Allison and I (of course we went together!) sat with our fellow unit-mates in a circle on the concrete floor of the meeting hut as Stephanie, our head counselor, who was wearing a RATT: Out of the Cellar t-shirt to celebrate the campers' arrival, bellowed out the rules for our stay:  No food in the cabins, no talking after nine p.m., no wandering out into the woods on our own.  We were expected to make our beds and sweep the floor of our tents every day; inspection was after lunch.  And, by the way, she reminded us to be sure to shake out our shoes every morning, as scorpions could crawl into them overnight.

This last part affected me deeply.  For the rest of the day I hyperventilated over the possibility of having my toe stung off by a scorpion as I innocently stuck my foot into my velcro E.T. sneaker the next morning.  I came up with an easy solution:  I wouldn't take my shoes off for the duration of the week.  Well, aside from swimming lessons -- but they didn't say anything about scorpions at the lake, so that would be ok.  At night, though, I would sleep with my shoes and socks on, thereby eliminating the scorpions' access to my feet and shoes, and conveniently allowing me to trek to the outhouse as needed without fumbling in the dark for proper footwear.  My plan didn't interfere with bathing, by the way, because we showered with our bodies outside of the corrugated metal stalls, only our heads subjected to the pounding arctic spray, since to immerse yourself would be to bring on certain death by hypothermia.

Our unit was the farthest from the dining hall, so we were roused before dawn by Stephanie barking "GET UP, FIVE MINUTES TIL BREAKFAST" from her bed before she rolled over and went back to sleep.  We'd stagger, bleary-eyed, to the entrance to our campsite, where another counselor known as Foo-Foo (thanks to her love of the exceedingly grating song "Little Bunny Foo-Foo," which we were forced to repeat, including hand movements, to and from every meal) would escort us to the camp's main building.  On the mornings when we had to set the tables -- the units rotated between setting up for, serving, and cleaning up after each meal, because no camp experience is complete without some forced labor -- I swear we must have risen at 4 a.m.

The food was, it probably goes without saying, inedible.  Leaden pancakes, cement-like grits, flabby bacon; whole dinners lost to me due to the presence of fish sticks or fried okra.  By the time we reached the dining hall, though, we were near collapse from starvation, the s'mores from the last night's campfire having been long since metabolized by the freezing showers, fear of bugs, and singing under duress, so we would choke down the petrified offerings with our lukewarm, bluish milk and watery orange juice.  By the end of the week, we'd walked something like 20 miles to and from our meals, and I'd lost nine pounds.     

After breakfast came swimming, for which we donned rubbery bathing caps and sticky sunblock, and some girls hung nose clips around their necks.  The water was so warm you'd sweat while practicing your backstroke, and so murky that you'd emerge with plant life and dirt clinging to your legs.  As we hurried into our clothes again, urged on by a whistle and barked orders, a counselor would come around and put alcohol into our ears to ward off infection.

The afternoons were filled with arts and crafts (at which I failed, time and again; the folk arts have never been my strong suit), canoeing, and general sweaty misery in the smothering Georgia humidity.  My second year at camp, I took horseback riding, which helped fill the time with loping around a tired ring on a tired horse named Rojo.  I loved Rojo with furious ardor, and I cried for weeks after returning home to my horseless existence.  That first summer, though, we had little to do but write letters home, clean our tents, and sweat.

Even with all this, with the heat and the forced marches and our tentmate crying herself to sleep every night, the last night of camp reduced me to a bawling mess.  The whole camp would gather on the sloping lawn by the lake and float slabs of bark adorned with candles out onto the water, and as the tiny lights drifted into the distance, reflected off the surface into thousands of shimmering flames, we'd sing "Barges" and "Pass It On" and "Linger" until the last candle went out in a distance hiss.   

Freedom of Expression

For years, my intense fear of authority made me an ideal student.  I was polite, quiet, and unquestioning of my teachers.  The couple of times I got in trouble in elementary school were, as I remember them, not my fault:  in first grade, Allison and I got spanked for jumping out from behind the door to the girls' bathroom to startle our classmates.  It wasn't our idea, though; we had momentarily fallen under the influence of Wynn G., a wiry, mousy girl with an incongruously loud voice and forceful manner, who moved to England after third or fourth grade. 

In second grade -- on the first day of school, actually -- I was sent to the corner during Language Arts for talking when the teacher, Miss Witless, was talking.  That wasn't my fault, either; Cindy and Liza and Barron were sitting at my table and they couldn't figure out what our spelling assignment was, so I was trying to explain it to them and the next thing I knew, I was banished to the corner.  I stood there for the rest of class, my nose pressed against the sickly green cinder block walls, tears slowly tracing wet tracks down my cheeks. 

Miss Witless, incidentally, also made me stay in from recess once because she didn't like the way I wrote a cursive "F."  She also corrected my use of the subjunctive in a homework assignment, changing "If I were a unicorn" (hee) to "If I was a unicorn."  My mom was very disturbed by this turn of events, and made certain I knew that I was right and that Miss Witless obviously had a limited grasp of standard English grammar. 

The Georgia public schools were all about humiliation and/or corporal punishment.  It wasn't a successful day unless you saw some kid splayed against a wall -- out in the entrance hall by the principal's office, for maximum public exposure -- and heard the whooooooosh-SWAP! of the paddle, each blow delivered with grim determination by the principal.  Of course, paddling was no longer an option by the time we hit high school, since many of the kids were significantly larger than our principal, who was an ineffectual man with no chin and a defeated air about him.  Thus, instead of paddling, they turned to fashion to exercise control over the student population.  Hence: the draconian dress code of LHS. 

As you may be aware, it can be extremely hot in Georgia.  The summers are, in fact, indescribably hot.  The air could flatten you with its density; walking outside to get the mail brings on an irresistable urge to lie down in an ultra-air-conditioned room for an hour or two.  It's hot.  Damn hot.  Really, really fucking hot. 

And yet, the ever-progressive school board in our hometown had determined in their infinite wisdom that junior high and high school students could not be trusted to keep their hormones in check for the hours between 8 AM and 3 PM, and therefore they should not be permitted to wear shorts to school..  Otherwise, they might become so comfortable and/or aroused that riots would erupt in the hallways and orgies would break out in the lunch line.  No flip-flops or sandals, either -- after all, the erotic qualities of the toe cannot be understated.  No matter how hot the day, there we were, roasting away in jeans and sneakers.  It was most unpleasant.

Our dress code also prohibited any clothing bearing obscenities or advertisements or other references to beer or drugs.  If you'd been to a concert or sporting event that had been sponsored in part by Coors, woe be to you if you wore a t-shirt that had a one-inch square bearing the word "Coors" on the back.  You'd be called to the vice principal's office and made to turn it inside out or go home and change.

Certain teachers prided themselves on being the Keepers of the Dress Code.  They would stand outside their classrooms between periods and eyeball every student who passed, making certain the boys' shirts were tucked in and the girls' skirts were no more than two inches above the knee.  If necessary, they would brandish a ruler.  A too-short skirt meant a call to one's parents and a ticket home to change.  I can't imagine a greater waste of time or resources, but then, in a way I'm glad I didn't have to sit in class staring at someone's midriff or looking at Dr. Dre shirts emblazoned with marijuana leaves.  I guess I'm old fashioned like that.

By the time we reached high school, by the way, I was still nervous about school in the sense that I HAD to get all A's and I HAD to be valedictorian or I would DIE; but my paralyzing terror of authority figures had rather dimmed.  Although I'd had a few great teachers over the years, I had become increasingly aware that many of my instructors were not the brightest bulbs (see: health teacher/football coach stating that Columbus discovered America with the pilgrims; French teacher declaring that France was shaped like a boot and filet mignon was a type of fish). 

In any event, one day in tenth grade, Allison and Sarah and Heidi and I were hanging out in the hall near Heidi's locker after lunch.  Sarah was wearing her typical outfit of jeans, a t-shirt and a button-down shirt.  Her t-shirt was one she'd picked up in Aspen, where she skied every year, and it said on it, in large, hot-pink letters:  "Remember when SEX was SAFE and SKIING was DANGEROUS?" 

As we were sitting there on the floor, probably doing a lot of nothing, Mrs. Fluster, the grand poobah of the Dress Code, came huffing over to us. 

"What does your shirt say?" she asked Sarah in an I-mean-business tone.  Sarah pulled her button-down open and let Mrs. Fluster read the shirt.  Mrs. Fluster's eyes scanned the words, and then blazed with anger.  "Stay right there," she said.  She huffed down the hallway to the vice principal's office.  When she came huffing back she said, "It has been determined that you are to cover that up for the rest of the day, and you are not to wear it again, y'hear?"

Before Sarah could say, "Yes ma'am," I stood up.  I towered over Mrs. Fluster, as she was about five feet in both height and width. 

"Oh, yeah," I said.  "Because when I look at Sarah's shirt, it just makes me want to run out and have sex with somebody!"  I clamped my hands on my hips and glared down at Mrs. Fluster.

Mrs. Fluster moved closer to me.  She put her round face inches from mine and said, "Well, sweetheart!  I find it offensive.  And that's all that matters."

She huffed away.  When the door to her classroom slammed shut, Allison, Sarah and Heidi let out a collective, "Oh, my GOOOOOOOD!"  Allison said something along the lines of, "What in the HELL were you thinking?", while Sarah began cackling uncontrollably.  I slumped against the wall, unaware where my gumption had come from or why I'd felt I needed to express those particular thoughts at that particular moment.  And yet, it felt oddly liberating.  I'd stood up for my friend and pointed out the absurdity of the rules, and I hadn't been paddled or put in the corner for it.  I had questioned authority, and the world hadn't come to an end.

I've been unadvisedly expressing my opinions ever since. 

Watcher in the Woods

Take two best friends who could scare the bejeezus out of themselves in broad daylight.  Add a third with an equally vivid imagination.  Put them in a lake house with no phone, in the middle of the woods some 30 miles from home, accessible only by a winding dirt road.  Throw in some strange noises, odd shadows and then -- just when they least expect it -- a power outage.  Things are bound to get interesting.

Junior or senior year of high school, my friend Sarah's parents bought a lake house and some massive amount of acreage in a remote area just over the Alabama border.  As you drove out to the property on a series of backroads, you occasionally passed a mobile home or a decaying roadside grocery.  A few turns onto the back-of-the-back-backroads, and you found yourself on a strip of red clay, surrounded only by pine forest, headed into a thousand-acre wood that seemed to absorb all of the light in the vicinity.  After a labrynthine series of turns, you ended up at the entrance of the property, which announced itself with a wide gateway and a sign identifying the lake house as "Aberdeen."  The house was a couple of miles further, and then still further than that was the glassy inlet of the lake.

The nearest neighbor was several miles away; the only proof that someone lived nearby was the presence of a few charming stop signs along the fence that separated their land from the road.  One said, "Do Not Hunt, Do Not Dump, Do Not Let Me Catch You On This Property!"  Another warned, "If You Pass This Point, You Become a Target."  Ahhh, yes, the redneck concept of justice:  shoot first, and ask questions later.

Sarah, Allison and I used to go out to Aberdeen to waterski and swim in the summertime, and to watch movies or just hang out on the weekends during the school year.  We didn't drink or engage in any other teenage malfeasance; we just liked having somewhere to go where we could be by ourselves.  And also, we could go down to the dock and shoot off fireworks.  So that was something. 

Since the house, a glass-fronted contemporary built (and decorated) circa 1972, was rather rustic and spare, we had to bring Sarah's portable TV/VCR with us when we wanted to watch a movie.  We would pick up some junk food on the way out there, including, most importantly, a roll of chocolate chip cookie dough, which we lumped onto a baking sheet in one giant mass, popped in the oven until it was slightly crisp on the outside and molten on the inside, and shoveled into our mouths with heaps of vanilla ice cream on top.  (I cannot recommend this enough as an evening snack.  In fact, I could go for some now.)

Most times we went out to Aberdeen, the three of us ended up scaring ourselves into thinking that someone was coming up the front steps or rustling around in the back bedroom.  On a few occasions, we had even gone home early on account of our collective fear.  There was something so slasher-flick perfect about the remote location and the slumber party ambience that we seemed to be inviting psychopaths to seek us out and chase us through the thick black woods, Blair Witch style. 

On this one particular night, we drove out to Aberdeen, unloaded the TV from the trunk, set ourselves up on the couch with some blankets and pillows, and inhaled our cookie dough extravaganza.  Then we started watching whatever video we had brought -- I'm sure it was one of the Brat Pack films, or possibly "Top Gun", since even in the mid-90s we were experiencing 1980s nostalgia.  As usual, there was a slight prickle in the air of our nervous energy, and every once in a while one of us would look over to the front windows a little too quickly, and the others would demand, "What?  WHAT?  Is there something out there?" while looking away, unable to face whatever might be creeping across the deck.

And then:  total darkness.  The lights went out.  With no provocation or warning.  It wasn't storming out; it wasn't even raining.  The three of us immediately launched into a mad panic of screaming and freaking out and rushing around and fumbling for shoes. Sarah kept yelling, "SOMEBODY CUT THE CORD!  THEY CUT THE CORD!"  Allison and I were both shrieking, "GET THE FLASHLIGHT GET THE FLASHLIGHT GET THE FLASHLIGHT!" 

Sarah ran to the fuse box and threw it open, shining the flashlight she'd somehow laid her hands on into the wall.  "THE CIRCUITS AREN'T THROWN!" she shouted.  We were now convinced that someone had cut the power to the house and was going to come into the darkness and Get Us. 

We had to make a decision, and fast.  Sarah took control and said, "Leave the TV, we'll come back tomorrow, GO!"  And we went hurtling out the front door, into the night.  Sarah ran first, with the flashlight in her hand.  Allison and I, left to grope our way along the railing without a light of our own, clutched each other's arms and tried to hurry without killing ourselves on the wooden staircase.  As Sarah raced toward the car, down a gravelly footpath, she hit the panic button on her key fob and set the car alarm going.  The headlights flashed and the horn blared.  Allison and I, still picking our way along the rocky grade, kept screaming at the top of our lungs.  Trust me, if anyone had in fact been intending to Get Us, they would have turned around and left at that point, shaking their head and muttering, "Ain't worth th' effort for these 'uns." 

We all piled into the car, slamming and locking the doors and staring out into the woods around us, looking for the power-cutting serial killer.  Sarah drove like a maniac to get us out of there, sending Allison and I flying around the car as she took the hairpin turns on the dirt road out of Aberdeen.  At one point, she shouted, "LOOK!  There's someone on the side of the road!" and we all started screeching again.  I may have (MAY have) started crying.  (Of course, no one was there.) 

None of us felt safe until we had reached the brightly-lit Shell station that marked the outskirts of town.  And even then, we scanned the roadside vigilantly and kept our doors securely locked.  We went to my house, none of us wanting to be alone.  When we flew breathlessly into the back door, my parents peered at us from the living room.  We told them what had happened, and of course they found it singularly amusing.  My dad pointed out that it was barely 9 PM, and also that it isn't possible to cut the power to just one house.  (Guess you had to be there, Dad; in the moment the lights went out and we had no way of defending ourselves from whatever was around, it made perfect sense.)

The next day, we drove out to retrieve the TV.  In the daylight, we could see that nothing on the property had been disturbed; the power was back on, and the TV was just as we'd left it.  Aberdeen seemed like a peaceful retreat again -- a place so remote, no one would even be able to find it, let alone bother terrorizing anyone who hung out there.  But, to maintain our sanity, for a while we only went out there in the afternoons and retreated to civilization when the sun went down.  And when we did stay overnight again, we made sure we knew where the flashlights were.

Spilled Milk

Spending the night at a friend's house as a kid was sometimes unsettling; the general setup was usually about the same as your own house, but everything was just a little off:  They watched different TV programs and had different cereals and you didn't know how to work their cable box.  The house smelled different.  Sometimes you wandered groggily into a closet instead of the bathroom when you had to pee in the middle of the night. 

When I stayed over at Allison's house -- which was virtually every weekend from first grade on -- the most discernible differences came at mealtime.  Her mom served dinner family style, in matching crockery, and always had a freshly baked cake for dessert; whereas my mom "dished up" at the stove and we ate ice cream or Little Debbies for dessert.  I didn't prefer one over the other -- the only thing I minded was that, at Allison's house, they drank milk with dinner.  I hated milk.  Never touched the stuff, except on cereal.  Yet I choked it down every time I went over there, because Allison's mom required you to empty your glass in order to qualify for dessert. 

Well, maybe I didn't choke it down every time.  Lots of times, I spilled it.  All over the table.  Allison's dad was and is one of the nicest, most jovial people you'll ever meet, but man, did he hate to have milk spilled all over the table while he was trying to enjoy his dinner.  We'd sit down and say grace and start passing the food around, and just as everyone's plate had been filled and we were digging in, CRASH!  Down went my glass.  The look on her dad's face as the bluish white puddle spread among the plates and silverware was as if I had upended the entire table.  The man simply wanted to eat in peace.

As we got older, I got slightly less clumsy, so there were fewer dinnertime mishaps and Allison's dad could finally relax when I came over.  Meanwhile, as a teenager Allison began to deal with some -- I'm not sure how to put this -- anger issues.  She became very sassy with her parents and frequently got grounded for mouthing off or stomping around or slamming her door repeatedly (once, her dad took her bedroom door off the hinges and confiscated it for a week or two after a particularly lively slamming incident).  I found this transformation a bit startling, since I generally got along with my parents pretty well; but, naturally, whenever she told me that they'd had a row at her house, I agreed that her parents were being unreasonable.

One Friday night when we were about fourteen, I went over to spend the night at her house, as usual.  We were having hot dogs for dinner; chili, cheese and other fixins were spread out on the table, and each of us kids (me, Allison and her brother) had glasses of milk placed neatly on our placemats.  Everything started out normally, people passing things and chatting about the previous week at school and work.  Then Allison and her mom started to get into it about something I don't even remember.  The exchange degraded into bickering and I suddenly took a profound interest in my dinner, not wanting to get involved.

Meanwhile, Allison's dad was painstakingly creating The World's Greatest Chili Cheese Dog.  He spooned each topping on carefully, making sure they spanned the full length of the bun.  He sprinkled on just the right amount of relish, then carefully dabbed ketchup and mustard on top of the mountainous creation.  He sat back for a moment to admire his work.  Just as he was bringing it to his mouth for the first, highly anticipated bite, Allison and her mom's argument escalated to the point at which he could no longer ignore it.  He set The World's Greatest Chili Cheese Dog back on his plate and said sternly, "Allison." 

Allison whirled around to face him and said, "DAD.  Why do you always have to BUTT IN?"  And before anyone could react, she picked up her glass of milk and tossed its contents on him, like a femme fatale throwing a martini in the face of a spurned suitor.  Everyone froze.  The milk had drowned The World's Greatest Chili Cheese Dog, which was now a sodden lump in a wilting, saturated bun.  Her dad's shirt was soaked down the front; a few droplets ran down his shocked, grim face. 

A tense silence hung in the room, preventing anyone from moving until, without warning, Allison bolted from the room.  She went tearing down the stairs into her basement room.  As she descended, we all flinched as we heard her head slam into the low-hanging ceiling over the staircase.  (Years later, at my engagement party, Allison's dad told me that he had silently celebrated this little payback, thinking, "Yes."  Hee.) 

I sat glued to my chair, not knowing what to do.  I was Allison's best friend, of course; but I was also a guest of the family, an invitee into their home.  I had no personal beef with her dad, so I couldn't just go bolting after her without a word.  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and stared at my plate.

Allison's mom broke the silence.  "Do you want to go home?" she asked.  I said no.  "Do you want to laugh?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at me.  "Kind of," I said, a smile breaking onto my face. 

Allison's dad got up, sighed deeply, and went into the kitchen to get another plate and start his masterpiece anew.  The rest of us started to chuckle a little, and then we broke into full, embarrassed laughter. 

Eventually, I went downstairs to see how Allison was doing.  She asked if her dad was mad.  I was like, "Uh, yeah."  I told her she had ruined his treasured hot dog and made a huge mess.  And she responded, "GOOD."  Then we both cracked up over the whole dramatic scene.  I was just relieved that I hadn't been the one to spill the milk.

Quality Education for Tomorrow's Women

There is a brilliant short film from 1951 entitled "The Home Economics Story."  It touts the Home Ec program at Iowa State University, showing how  women could use a degree in food science or child development as the foundation of a successful career (you know, in case they were childless spinster freaks).  However, the jocular narrator of the film never loses sight of the real goal; he boasts that our heroine Louise's degree in nutrition would "prepare for her most important role ever:  being Mrs. Johnson!"  (At this, we are shown Louise slaving away over a hot stove -- smiling vacantly like a Valium-riddled housewife -- while Mr. Johnson relaxes in his recliner with the newspaper and his pipe in the background.) 

Of course, this film is all sorts of wrong and dated and anti-feminist.  But for me, it strikes a chord of familiarity:  my grandmother not only went to Iowa State (as did my grandfather and my parents), but she also majored in Home Economics there.  She lived the Home Economics Story.  And damn, she was an amazing woman. 

A mother of four, a grandmother of ten and the best cook you can ever imagine, she was a tall, sturdy Danish woman who could complete the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in mere minutes.  Her house was always immaculate (yet never so clean that you feared touching anything); she cooked for the entire extended family for a week every summer, when we converged on my grandparents' house for our annual reunion; and, even with a laundry list of sisyphean tasks to complete, she always found the time to read or cuddle with one of us grandkids.  I don't know how much of that she learned in college, but the degree in Home Ec couldn't have hurt with figuring out how to balance the myriad demands of an exceedingly busy home life.

Apparently, in the decades between her generation and mine, a lot changed in the world of Home Economics. 

While my brother courted violence by sporting Mom jeans in his seventh grade days, I had a much more freewheeling experience at Girls' Junior HIgh across town.  Without boys around to impress, we could be as silly and giggly as we wanted (because girls are girls, we still wore makeup and teased our bangs every day; but we wore much daggier clothes than we would have if it had been co-ed).  We had fights at our school, but they were girl fights -- they usually involved one girl's earring getting ripped out or someone's face getting clawed with a Lee Press On Nail or a bra strap being torn apart (God, this is starting to sound like some kind of bad hotel porn:  "The Catfights of Girls' Junior High").  There was no culture of fear, unlike the tormented boys' stalag atmosphere.  It was more a culture of...I don't know -- wackiness, I guess.  Over the course of the two years, we cultivated a stockpile of inside jokes that undoubtedly most of us still recall and can evoke with a single keyword.

Most of the fodder for our stories came from Mrs. H., our Home Economics teacher.  Home Ec at Girls' Junior High wasn't about cooking or sewing.  No.  It was about becoming a proper Southern lady. 

In class, we learned to give ourselves manicures and apply nail polish.  We "got our colors done" (I am apparently a Spring, which means I should drape myself in peachy pastels and gold accents).  We received makeup tips and practiced fluffy, Glamour Shots-ready hairdos.  We learned about dieting and calculating our body fat so we could keep our "fig-urrs" after we'd produced a few kids.  That was Home Economics.  We were actually graded on how well we did our nails and put on makeup.  I kid you not. 

The thing was, none of us minded the absurdity of the course material, because Mrs. H. was insane.  We could have been learning hog husbandry and we'd have loved every second of it because she was so damned entertaining.

Mrs. H. was a devout Baptist.  She prayed a lot in class.  She prayed for us to become adept at our manicures and makeovers.  She prayed for us to remain abstinent until we were married.  She prayed over someone wearing a color that was outside of their "season."  (I have nothing against prayer, of course.  It's just, her prayer was craaaazy prayer.)  She told us about how Satan manifested himself in everyday life and how we could combat his evil. 

For example, she told us that one night her son had had a nightmare, so she went and stood in the middle of their living room and shouted, "Demonic Satan, I rebuke you!  I rebuke you from my son's bedroom!  I rebuke you from his dreams!"  (Yeah.  Crazy.)  People would bait her with stories of how their TV had turned on by itself or how they'd been unable to complete their homework assignment due to a raging headache, and she would advise us all that Satan was at work here and had to be banished by the power of our collective  prayer. 

Because Mrs. H. was a bit...off-center, we were able to get away with more blatant mischief in that class than in any other.  In seventh grade math class, we'd driven our teacher Mrs. G. rather mad by humming just loudly enough for her to hear something, but not loudly enough for her to figure out it was us.  She would spin around from the chalk board, white dust smeared across her face, and demand, "Hear that?  Do y'all hear that?  It's like...a hummin' noise."  And we'd all stare at her, looking wide-eyed and baffled, even as we continued to radiate a warm hmmmmmmmmm.

In Mrs. H's class, though, it was mass chaos.  She had us clean up the Home Ec lab once -- we didn't learn to cook, but dammit we had to be able to clean -- and the next thing she knew, we were racing around spraying each other with 409 and throwing sopping wet sponges at each other's heads and pairs-skating around on the Mop-N-Glo'd floors, shrieking as though we were at a slumber party in the heat of a pillow fight (Jesus, again with the soft porn undertones). 

Another time, someone had brought a tiny, bouncy rubber ball to school, so of course it was unleashed the moment Mrs. H. turned around for two seconds.  At first, we tried passing it around with a low bounce whenever she wasn't looking.  But we quickly became emboldened and just started hurling it around in full view.  On one particularly wild toss, the intended catcher missed it and it ricocheted off the window and smacked into a girl's head.  The girl snatched it and tried to throw it to the ground in anger, but -- being a bouncy ball -- it shot off the floor, hit the ceiling, rebounded off the air conditioner up into the fluorescent light, where it rattled around for a while and then dropped onto someone's desk.  My friend Sarah grabbed it and hid it in her fist.  Our raucous laughter silenced as if turned off by a switch.

Mrs. H. had had enough.  She stood in the center of the classroom and glared at us as though we had each been possessed by Satan.  Even prayer couldn't help her here, though.  She screamed at us for a good while, threatening to fail us all and call our mamas. 

As she blasted us with her fury, she went to close one of the closet doors in the back of the room.  She didn't notice, though, that something was blocking it, so she kept slamming it and it kept creaking back open.  This only increased her rage.  By this time, we thought her head might fly off and burst into flames.  We all choked back our laughter as her tirade continued and that door kept defying her increasingly forceful attempts to close it. 

Finally, she gave up and stomped back to the front of the room and tried to pick up where she had left off -- something about the fine art of exfoliation.  When she turned to write on the board, Sarah tossed the ball over her shoulder toward the back row.  And it began again.

A Cautionary Tale

[Editor's Note:  Today, we have another special guest-blog from a member of my family (see my dad's contribution here).  My brother -- best known to you readers for his fake puppy torture -- has offered to share with the world a terribly traumatic event from his own adolescence.  Take it, big brother!]

Our hometown, entrenched in the Deep South, wasn’t exactly quick to embrace the federally mandated desegregation brought about by Brown v. Board of Education.  For years, the “separate but equal” doctrine was realized in the form of two junior high schools, with the black school located in the poorest neighborhood in town.  Once the powers that be realized that desegregation wasn’t just some crazy passing fad, they begrudgingly moved forward to mix the populace of school children.  There was a problem, though. 

With funding to build a new facility nonexistent, the school in the poor, black (and, to the town’s white elite, crime-ridden) neighborhood would have to be utilized.  Town lore is that the wealthy white families decreed the idea of having their twelve- and thirteen-year old daughters exposed on a daily basis to the “mean streets” of the black area of town as completely unacceptable.  So a compromise was struck:  the boys and girls would be segregated the way the races previously had been, with the boys being bused to the formerly all-black school for 7th and 8th grades while the girls went to a relatively bright, modern facility near the town’s local college.

When we moved to Georgia, I was in 5th grade, and for two years my male friends and I would speak in hushed tones whenever the subject of Boys’ Junior High (yes, that was its actual name) was broached.  Horror stories of ritual beatings by the sadistic principal and of racial violence were passed along by kids’ older brothers.  I spent much of the summer after 6th grade in dread of the fast-approaching school year, when I would commence boarding the bus every day for a nearly one hour commute out of the lush greenery of suburbia into what I perceived as an urban jungle.  The only mitigating factor was that my friends and I were all in this together, and we vowed to help each other make it through the next two years intact.

The campus of Boys’ Junior High exacerbated the uniquely prison-like feel of the all-male situation -- the two buildings comprising the school were cold, institutional brick structures completely devoid of air conditioning, making the already short fuses of adolescent boys even shorter during Georgia’s extended summer months.  Surrounding the school was what looked like a demilitarized zone of decrepit, substandard governmental housing in various stages of disrepair and collapse.  The gymnasium and football field (there had to be a football field, of course) were surrounded by trees, which I recall as always being barren of leaves, regardless of the season.

As one might expect, throwing several hundred hormone-riddled preteen boys into this environment was a potent cocktail.  Much like every prison drama you’ve ever seen, anyone who stuck out for any reason was hammered into submission by relentless taunting, social shunning and sometimes even physical violence.  While fights occurred less often than I had imagined, when they did happen they were brutal.  I witnessed one fight between classes in which one of the combatants repeatedly slammed the other kid’s head into the concrete sidewalk between the school’s two buildings.  Another time, I saw a table overturned in the cafeteria when a fight broke out, spraying food dramatically as the two boys tumbled to the ground, fists flying.  Spectators crowded around them, shouting encouragement.  I even stood by in close proximity as a casual acquaintance of mine was provoked into a fistfight which resulted in him fracturing his wrist when he swung wildly to punch the other kid in the jaw and missed, connecting with a concrete wall instead.  I still remember being paralyzed by fear and fascination as the fight broke out while another friend of ours, ashen faced, ran to get a teacher.

The daily grind at Boys’ Junior High consisted mostly of trying hard to meet the primary objective:  not getting noticed.  Part of that routine was to make damned sure every day that the clothes you wore were as generically masculine as possible.  Rumors of homosexual acts being consummated by kids in the bathrooms were often circulating among the school’s populace, and these were, for us as adolescent boys, the worst possible slander.  Anyone wearing anything that was remotely gaudy, bright or perceived to be feminine in any way was potentially subject to Abu Ghraib-level psychological torture from the masses as the offender’s sexual orientation was brought to the forefront.  I steered all of my mother’s purchasing decisions for my clothes towards the blandest clothing possible and away from her natural inclination to buy something “cheery” for her son to wear.  Thusly, I was able to grind out each day as an invisible member of the masses, avoiding verbal and physical assault while making my way hastily from classroom to classroom.

It was in this environment that one of the worst days of my life took place.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a morning person.  During the entire course of our shared childhood, Lawyerish and I probably spoke an aggregate of 10 words during the time before we went off to school each morning, when I would scowl into my peanut butter toast in front of the TV, my mind bleary.  In this early morning haze, I would dutifully shower and throw on whatever clothes were at the top of the pile in my dresser drawers, giving next to no thought as I put them on.  One morning before school, I noticed that my jeans felt odd for some reason, but dismissed it as part of the generally crappiness of waking up.  I went off to the bus to begin my day at Boys’ Junior High.

In homeroom, our first stop of the morning, I sat at my desk squirming uncomfortably.  As my mind awakened and my senses became more acute, I realized that my jeans were unbelievably cramped; they pinched my body in odd places.  I also noticed that they were a darker shade of blue than the well-worn and faded jeans I normally wore. 

My first assumption was that my mother had bought me brand new jeans and had failed to wash them (which she was required to do at least four or five times before they were worthy of being worn), making them ill-fitting and scratchy.  Then I looked back at my cramped butt and in a single horrible moment came to a realization that caused all of the blood to drain from my face and brought about a huge wave of nausea:  my mother had mistakenly put her jeans into my dresser.  And I was wearing them.  At Boys’ Junior High.  The right rear pocket had three-inch high, hot neon pink cursive stitching proclaiming the jeans as “CHIC” to the world.

In abject horror, I slouched down as far as possible into my desk so that the stitching would not be visible to the kid sitting behind me.  That was fine for the moment, but in mere minutes we would be in the hallways where my shame would be visible for all to see.  The magnitude of the repercussions of being spotted wearing women’s Chic jeans with hot pink lettering could not be overstated.  If I escaped the day with my life, the rest of the school year would be one day after another of unimaginable shame and humiliation.  And wouldn’t this be the sort of thing that people would remember all through high-school as well? 

My entire adolescent social life was hanging by a hot pink thread.

Worst of all, I didn’t have any books with me in homeroom.  Nothing to awkwardly clasp against my backside as I ambled through the hallways to the next class.  My locker was near my first period classroom, so at the end of the previous day I had left everything in there to pick up on my way to first period.  What had seemed so clever at 2:45pm yesterday now could easily seal my fate as the greatest pariah in junior high history. 

I began sweating profusely as I watched the clock tick down to the bell.  When it rang, I got up and adopted as a defense the only thing I could imagine:  I jammed the thumb of my right hand into my pocket, resting the palm of my hand over the offending letters.  Walking like this was awkward and looked wholly unnatural, like I was doing some sort of 70’s pimp walk, but the consequences of discovery were so dire that I had little choice but to lurch along in the odd gait forced by my defensive posture.  Once in the hallway, among the throng of boys, I tried to stay along the right side and angle my butt towards the wall so that if my fingers slipped, the neon lettering wouldn’t be immediately apparent.  I imagined a horrible, cinematic moment in which everyone would suddenly freeze in silence to gawk at the freak wearing women’s jeans in an all-boys school.  Frankly, I would have much preferred to have been naked.

As I walked, I got a tap on my shoulder.  It was the somewhat rednecky kid who sat behind me in homeroom.  He was a tall, lanky kid with a blonde mullet who wore the same series of five T-shirts to school every week.  He and I had been pleasant to each other during the course of the year in homeroom due to a mutual affection for the Daredevil comic books I would sometimes bring to read, but that was the only thing we had ever spoken about.  I turned around, and I immediately knew that he knew.  It was all over.  Everything in my life was about to come crashing down.

But instead of sporting a smirk, he wore an expression of grave and earnest concern.  “I know why you’re walking that way,” he said.  He didn’t say this in a mocking tone at all.  Instead, he spoke in the manner someone speaks to a person whose loved one is in the hospital in critical condition -- hushed and measured tones.  He knew how bad this was, and he understood that everything hung in the balance for me at this very moment.

“Where’s your first period class?” he asked.  When I told him, he nodded.  “Mine’s over there too.  I’ll walk right behind you and cover your back.”  He handed me his Trapper Keeper, which made for a much more effective, although still awkward looking, shield.  In silence we made our way through the school, pushing through the boisterous masses and nodding wanly to the people we recognized in the hallway as we passed them.  Apparently, no one noticed the oddity that he and I, two kids from completely different social worlds, were in lockstep together down the hallway.

Once we made it to my locker, he stood behind me as I gathered the books I would use for the rest of the day to guard my horrible secret.  Since I was now safe, he wished me luck and headed off to shop class while I went on to my “gifted” class.  The dichotomy wasn’t lost on me as I realized that the kindness of this one “redneck” kid had saved me from an unbearable load of humiliation and pain.

The remainder of the day, I slouched down in every class (taking the back row in each class without assigned seating) and blocked my butt with my books whenever I walked.  No one else became privy to my secret shame, and for the rest of the year that kid behind me in homeroom never mentioned it to me again (or, to my knowledge, any of his friends).

One thing did change for me in my daily routine:  each and every morning, before putting my jeans on, I would dutifully inspect them for any signs of hot pink lettering.

Bachelor Number Two

My second (and last) date in high school was with another yearbook photographer, Tad (the annual staff really got around, I tell you).  I didn't like-like Tad (he was about 5'6" to my 5"11"), but after he asked me to the Christmas dance senior year, we talked on the phone a few times and found we had a lot in common.  He actually liked hearing about ballet and talking about smart-people things, plus he played the piano and was very (VERY) into classical music.  He was also on the debate team and in the drama club.  With that much Tortured Artistic Soul between us, we had conversations that would have sounded grossly pretentious to anyone else, but that we both thoroughly enjoyed. 

When a girlfriend of mine found out that I was going to the dance with Tad, she warned me that he was a "total hornball" and that I should "keep my knees glued together" on our date.  She cited examples of other people who'd gone out with him and had to fight him off the entire time.  The word "octopus" was used.  To me, this seemed grossly out of character for such a mild-mannered, Debussy-listening guy; but I appreciated the advance warning.  I was prepared to defend my virtue by any means necessary.

Slightly giddy with the prospect of attending a real social event, I found a great dress in a catalog -- a black velvet sheath with rhinestone spaghetti straps -- which ultimately had to be taken in by a seamstress friend of my mom's when it arrived (I was about as wide as a dry stick of spaghetti back then).  I got some sparkly earrings and a pretty barrette and Mom and I splurged on some Clinique makeup for the occasion.  Of course, I hot-rolled my hair when the evening in question arrived.

Tad rang my doorbell on the dot at 8:00.  Long before, when I was still in junior high, my parents had set up a rule that, before I got into a car with any boy, they had to meet him.  (They'd kindly set that rule aside for the Sadie Hawkins dance since I had been the one driving; it had been floating around, useless, up until that Christmas dance.)  Tad was appropriately charming and said nice things about my dress and the house.  He looked freshly scrubbed and combed.  The only problem was that he was wearing a BRIGHT RED PLAID sportcoat.  The dance was black tie.  I tried not to die when I saw it.  He thought it was festive.  I did not.  This was going to be my last date in high school -- couldn't we just do things normally?

We headed out to Tad's Saab, and he opened the door for me and helped me into the car.  On the way to the dance, we talked about our shared Superior Aesthetic Sensibilities and how it set us apart from our philistine classmates.  Meanwhile, I flashed back to my friend's warning about him being a "hornball."  I stayed alert throughout the ride -- if he slowed a bit at an intersection, I gripped the door latch; I feared he might suddenly veer off in the wrong direction, drive me out to a deserted lake access, and try to rend my black stockings asunder in the cold, darkened car.  Fortunately, he did not, and we made it downtown and parked and headed inside.

The Christmas dance was thrown by a group of popular kids' parents at a private party space downtown.  The place was decked out in garland and white lights, with a huge Christmas tree dominating the entry way next to the bar.  I don't remember if they served liquor, but if they did I certainly didn't have any, seeing as I was the Biggest Prude in the Western World at the time.  Someone had hired a photographer, who snapped shots of us, prom-style, as we swept into the party.  Tad and I had a bit of a time figuring out an arrangement that would not make him look like a dwarf next to me -- he may have stood on something in the end, I'm not sure.  But he was good-humored about it and I laughed it off, trying not to let the giant stick that was lodged solidly up my butt affect everyone else's holiday cheer.

We sauntered into the ballroom and greeted our friends and classmates, who exclaimed over Tad's jacket (thank God -- they liked it; one less thing to worry about).  Then we started dancing.  It turned out Tad loved to move.  I mean, loved to move.  I couldn't help but appreciate his enthusiasm; it certainly beat standing awkwardly against a wall all night, pretending to be above it all while yearning to boogie down to Sir Mix-a-Lot and Kriss Kross.  Even so, his...uh, style was a bit more attention-grabbing than I might have liked.  Soon, a circle had formed around us and people were cheering him on as he thrashed and whirled and jackhammered about. 

During the slow songs, I went and got punch; I didn't feel much like swaying dreamily to "I Will Always Love You" with someone whose face would be pressed against me somewhere in the vicinity of my nonexistent boobs.  I didn't get the vibe that he was interested in that, either, so it worked out fine.  He was really swell about the whole thing, while I'm sure I came off as awkward and standoffish.

When the night ended, we walked sweatily back to the car, enjoying the chill of the December night.  I reminded myself to be vigilant again, as this was the most vulnerable part of the date, and I wasn't having any octopus-like activity on my watch, no sir.  As Tad maneuvered the Saab along the winding country roads leading to my house, we somehow got into an argument over whether popular music was "real music."  His position was that it wasn't, it couldn't be, and it offended his sensibilities that anyone would dare to call pop singers "artists."  He cranked the volume on the CD player, and jabbed his finger in the air, saying, "Debussy!  That's art!  That's music!"  A stony silence ensued.

He coasted down my driveway, the silence thickening the air between us.  I had my seatbelt off before he had put the car in park.  I flung myself out the door and marched up our front walk.  I could hear him trotting behind me, trying to catch up.  I opened our front door and called into the house, "Hey, Mom!" just as he reached the porch.  I hopped over the threshold and turned around, my hand on the doorknob, and said, as politely as I could, "Thank you, Tad.  I had a nice time.  Bye!"  As I closed the door, he peeked his head in for a second and said a bewildered good night to me and my mom. 

I don't know what came over me that ended everything so abruptly.  We were having a pretty fine time until the argument in the car.  Maybe I was tired since it was past my 9:00 bedtime, or maybe my blood sugar was low; it had probably been ten hours since my last rice cake.  Maybe I was still terrified that he would Try Something in those last moments alone together in the car.  As I'm writing this, it sounds so harsh, as if I was turning what Brian did to me around on Tad.  But I know it wasn't that calculating. I was a teenager, prone to fits and starts of sullenness and hostility; so perhaps I was just Being That Way. 

Fortunately, I don't think Tad was hurt; we still talked a good deal after that, and he sent me flowers for my last ballet performance later that year. (Although he took Allison to prom instead of going for a repeat date with me.)

A few years ago, I found out that Tad lives in New York with his longtime partner in a gorgeous apartment that has been featured in the Times.  He's an artist and designer of some kind and his partner is an architect.  During law school, I I hung out with them on a few occasions and we gossiped about the old hometown, which was a blast.  I wish I had known how everything would turn out back in high school.  I could have relaxed my knees a bit.

Bachelor Number One

I went on exactly two dates in high school.  The first ended with the guy darting out of the car before it had come to a complete stop (I drove) and the two of us never speaking again.  The second ended with me racing for my front door, flinging it open and yelling "Good night!" to the poor chap, who was ten paces behind me -- he had wanted to see me to the door like a proper gentleman; but for me the night was over and I hoped to avoid any awkward kiss-dodging moments by simply abandoning him on our front walk. 

My first date ever was hardly even a real date, considering I asked the guy out.  It was junior year, and the Anchor Club and Iota Gamma -- the two girls' "service" clubs -- were sponsoring a Sadie Hawkins dance.  (You know, where the girls as the guys?)  My school wasn't much for dances -- people preferred to spend their weekend evenings getting shitfaced at someone's hunting cabin or driving donuts around the KMart parking lot in their pickup trucks -- so this was a unique opportunity for me to humiliate myself, to lower my social quotient even further than the zero it already was.

I had no plans whatsoever to participate in the Sadie Hawkins dance; after all, I had better things to do on a Saturday night, like sew ribbons on my pointe shoes and blot grease off of a slice of Domino's pizza while watching a Hitchcock movie with my parents.  But for some reason, two girls in my AP History class took a sudden interest in convincing me to ask someone to the dance.  They weren't trying to set me up to make fun of me (which I would usually take as a given); they had gotten to know and like me and, as members of the popular elite, they thought that my appearance at this event would help me penetrate their peer group.  I didn't actually want to be a part of that group, but after weeks of their cajoling, I relented.

My target was Brian S., a senior who was on the yearbook staff with me.  He was tall and lanky, a bit on the quiet side and not particularly interesting;  he was pretty popular, but he didn't seem like the type who would summarily shoot me down when I asked him.  He seemed safe somehow.  The funny thing is, I can't remember ever having a conversation with him prior to asking him out.  I cannot believe that one evening, I took the phone book out of my mom's creaky white desk, searched through the S's until I found his number, and dialed the phone.  It makes my palms sweat just thinking about it -- I am not a phone person even now, and calling someone out of the blue like that is NOT my thing. 

My worst fear was that he would be like, "WHO?" when I said my name.  When he picked up the phone, the words tumbled out of my mouth in a rush:  "HeythisisLawyerishfromannualstaffLawyerishLastname--"  I would have gone on indefinitely, but he mercifully interrupted me.  We had a very brief exchange about nothing, and then I came out and asked him.  And he responded, "I don't know."  Huh?  I almost hung up the phone so I could pretend the whole thing had never occurred, but he went on to explain that he was supposed to attend some sort of family thing that weekend?  So he would have to check with his mom (hee) and get back to me?  And that was that.  I got off the line like my eyebrows were on fire.

(In case it's not painfully obvious, he was totally stalling so he could ask all his friends if being seen in public with me would be social death.  TOTALLY.)

A few days later, he told me he could go and that was that.  Since I figured we would have less than nothing to talk about (surprisingly, high school guys were not that interested in hearing about my ballet performances or about how I was acing every one of my classes), I arranged for us to double with a ballet friend of mine and her boyfriend, who happened to be one of the yearbook photographers.  (His work, by the way, was less than professional.  Or even amateur.  It was horrendous.  Most of the black and white candids in our annuals look as though someone poured bleach over the negatives or shone face-melting klieg lights on the subjects before the shutter clicked.) 

On the night of the dance, I put on my white jeans (tapered legs, baby), a lavender J Crew sweater and a pair of woven loafers and hot-rolled my hair and drove my Dad's Grand Am over to Brian's house (thankfully, I did not have to drive my mom's minivan, which had a startling habit of stalling for no apparent reason in the middle of intersections).  Brian got in the car (I have no recollection of what he was wearing, but I'm going to guess khakis and a plaid shirt) and I promptly backed over a curb, nearly crushing his parents' mailbox in my haste to get us on the road.  We met up with our double dates, Charlie and Amanda, and (thank God) consolidated into Charlie's car.  We went to dinner at a decidedly unromantic Italian place that served two-foot long hoagies and manhole cover-sized plates of pasta with pitchers of Coke or sweet tea.  (Years later, the owners were indicted for running a crystal meth lab in their backyard.) 

After eating, we drove over to the high school and parked in front of the gym.  We could hear music pulsing inside, but we didn't see anyone going in or coming out.  I have no idea why, but as a group we decided not to go in.  We bailed on the dance.  The dance that was the purpose of this whole ridiculous exercise.  Instead, we drove out to Amanda's house and sat in her darkened basement and watched "The Silence of the Lambs."  Brian didn't try to hold my hand; he didn't even sling his arm around the back of the couch in a jocular manner.  No.  He fell asleep. 

I wanted badly to bolt out of the house and race home, or in any direction away from this debacle, but we were miles from anywhere and my car was back where we'd first met up with Charlie and Amanda.  Who, incidentally, were polite enough not to make out right next to me as I sat ramrod straight  on that overstuffed plaid couch staring straight at the TV while my date -- my first date -- snored mildly next to me. 

Brian woke up just before the end of the movie (you know, that scene with the night-vision goggles?).  He proceeded to watch the ending through his fingers, cringing in the corner of the couch.  (BAH!)  And then we piled back into Charlie's car and then I drove Brian home.  I swear, he had his hand on the door handle the entire way, and as we pulled into his driveway, he launched out of the still-moving car and tossed a "Thanks!  G'night!" over his shoulder as he sprinted into the house. 

I went home and told my parents I'd had a great time.  That Monday in yearbook staff, I heard Brian's friends making fun of him for having gone out with me, and for not having shown up at the dance.  I sat there, five feet away from them, diligently cropping pictures and eyeballing my page layouts as they jostled each other and laughed and my neck prickled, and then I got up and went to the bathroom for the rest of the class period. 

Risk Averse

Growing up, Allison and I had the remarkable ability to scare the living daylights out of ourselves.  Left home alone after dark, the two of us would have every light in the house ablaze, the TV on, the radio going, and we would sing loudly to each other from whatever songbook happened to be nearby -- all to deter the murderer we were certain was lurking on the other side of the windowpane (or at least to drown out the sound of him breaking and entering and coming to get us).  Even with all of these protective measures in place, we sometimes convinced ourselves that someone had gotten into the house, and I would call my parents at whatever party they were attending and beg them to come home.

We were not immune to desperate fear in broad daylight, either.  One weekend afternoon when we were in fourth or fifth grade, we were puttering around the woods behind my house, undoubtedly playing "Horse" or "Little House" or perhaps attempting a spy mission.  The woods backed up to a neighbor's house and, for reasons I can't remember, we walked up to their garage door, which was closed, and peered in.  A pair of red eyes glared back at us. 

We tore back through the woods to my house, screaming all the way.  "A vampire!  A vampire!"  We were certain the monster was in hot pursuit of us until we raced up the back porch stairs, banged through the screen door and collapsed on the couch, safely inside. 

On further reflection, with the hysteria of the moment waning, we agreed that perhaps it wasn't a vampire at all, but instead a panther.  You know, the kind of panther that just about everyone keeps in their garage.  We scrupulously avoided that house for weeks, possibly months, until some time later, when I was coming out the back door at Allison's house.  As I went to get into their car, I spotted the garage door control on the wall.  It had two glowing red buttons on it.  OH. 

Sadly, I am still able to work myself into a lather over perceived dangers without investigating them fully.  Last week in Costa Rica, my husband and I went hiking through the cloud forest in Monteverde.  It was the only time we did anything without a guide, and we were the first people on the trail that morning.  We saw some white-faced monkeys chasing each other through the treetops and heard howlers in the distance.  We stood on the bridges that traversed the canopy and took in the almost deafening sounds of the birds and cicadas and all the life that teems in the rainforest.

As I stood at a bend in the trail, looking up into the trees, I heard something behind me.  It was a low, vibrating growl.  I froze.  Just the day before, our guide on another hike had told us that he had seen a jaguar around Monteverde (although only once) and that ocelots and jaguarundis -- smaller cats, but feral animals nonetheless -- prowl the area's nature reserves as well.  I was convinced, as I listened to the purring sound, that a jaguar was just over my shoulder in the brush, watching me through the leaves, and that in moments the cat would be on me, pinning me to the ground, and ripping my face off with its ferocious teeth.  I whimpered.

Without moving, I quietly told my husband to stop and listen.  He heard it too.  Then we realized the growl had a rhythm to it, one that made it sound like a slow, regular grunt.  Great, I thought.  It's a wild boar.  We'll be trampled by its hooves or gored on one of its tusks.  My husband wanted to stay and see what it was; but I was sure that we would end up as the thing's lunch if we stood around any longer.  I took off running down the trail.  Once we were on the next bridge, I was able to relax a bit.  We had survived.

We hiked on through the rest of the trail, a couple of kilometers long, without encountering any more threatening sounds.  As we emerged from the jungle, we passed by a little garden where a bunch of hummingbird feeders dangled from the trees.  We stood and watched the tiny birds darting around for a while.  And then I heard it again.  There it was -- the growling/grunting sound.  My eyes widened.  I froze again, and the sound grew louder.  Just then, a hummingbird shot past me, coming from behind.   As it whirled around my head, its rapidly beating wings made a motor-like sound.  A low, vibrating growl.

OH.   

Bus Stop

I was recently at a meeting with a bunch of other lawyers, and during a break one of the attorneys mentioned that he had recently informed his daughter, who is fourteen and entering high school in September, that she would have to ride the bus to school this year.  The attorney mentioned with genuine surprise that his daughter had not taken this news well; doors were slammed and expletives used.  He wondered aloud why she would be so upset by something that was, to him, completely innocuous, a simple practicality. 

As the youngest person in the room, I had cringed at the mere mention of the school bus; so it fell to me to explain that he had, for all intents and purposes, ruined his daughter’s social life.  And since this would be her freshman year, her becoming known as a Bus Kid could well reverberate through the ensuing four years, thereby destroying her hopes of any semblance of popularity even before her high school career had begun.  I advised that he might want to arrange for some other transport – pack mule, maybe, or Conestoga wagon – for his daughter, rather than subject her to this torture. 

When I was in high school, my mom dropped me off every morning on her way to work.  This meant I was there almost an hour before the building even opened.  In the warmer months, I and the other few early arrivals camped out on the concrete front steps until the first bell signaled that we could enter.  In winter, we were allowed to wait in the vestibule just inside the main entrance.  I usually sat on the cold stone floor, reading a book or getting a head start on upcoming homework assignments.  I hardly knew any of the other students who shared my plight – that of not having a car, or even a friend with a car, and of being subject to our parents’ schedules, which placed us at school before dawn.  But at least we were all secure in the knowledge that we were not the lowest of the low on the high school totem pole.  We, after all, did not ride the bus.

From first through seventh grade, on the other hand, I rode the school bus every day.  Our driver, Mrs. Dukes, was a woman in her forties who favored long-sleeved navy blue  leotards paired with skin-tight Jordache jeans.  She often wore a jaunty red newsboy cap to provide a splash of color. 

Mrs. Dukes recognized that the vagaries of traffic and mechanics could sometimes throw her schedule off.  Rather than have kids wait at their stops for longer than necessary, Mrs. Dukes would announce her approach to the next pick-up spot by a signature horn blast:  “Beep Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep Beep-Beep.”  As she leaned on the horn, kids would come pouring from their homes and race toward the stop.  (I, on the other hand, was always nervous that I wouldn’t hear the horn from our house; so I waited out at my stop every day, regardless of the weather.)

The bus was a standard-issue Blue Bird, circa 1953, with a seafoam interior and worn out dark green vinyl seats.  Mrs. Dukes assigned us to seats, filling the bus from the back forward according to the order of the stops.  In first grade, I sat between Russ Davidson and Lamont Cofield in row 22.  Mrs. Dukes had a simple, yet strict, set of rules:  we were not allowed to talk, eat or chew gum.  If anyone got out of line, she would pull the bus over and march up and down the aisle, lecturing us about controlling ourselves and warning us that the Lord was watching. 

One day, in fourth grade, Mrs. Dukes had to pull the bus over to clean the back window, which had fogged over.  From inside the bus, all we could see was a disembodied hand wiping a rag over the window.  Several of us started screaming and laughing about the “monster” that was trying to take over the bus.  Mrs. Dukes, however, did not find it the slightest bit amusing when she clambered up the stairs to find her charges shrieking and running around the bus.  That afternoon, before we boarded the bus to go home, she made us stand out in the school yard and scream as loud and as long as we could.  We yelled and yelled and our voices grew hoarse and our heads hurt and our ears were ringing.  We got on the bus in silence and never screamed again while in her care.    

Mrs. Dukes was a devout Christian.  She sang hymns sometimes as we sped through the countryside, and she always led us in a fervent prayer before we had a school break.  Every now and then, someone would throw up on the bus, and as we all gagged and rushed to put down the windows, Mrs. Dukes would get her bucket, mop and ammonia from the back, and as she cleaned up the mess, she would pray for the person who had been sick:  “Dear Lord, Heavenly Jesus, please he’p this chil’ to be healed and to feel the power of Your glory.  Amen.”   

Unfortunately, Mrs. Dukes’s faith was tested by a fair amount of adversity, beyond screaming kids and vomit cleanups.  She contracted diabetes.  Her husband passed away.  Then her house burned down; she and her children lost everything they owned.  Even so, there she was, every day, with her signature horn blasts and her strict rules and her prayers.  I am sure she retired years ago (in fact, I hate to say it, but I’m not sure if she’s still with us), but when I picture the start of the school year in my hometown, I always imagine Mrs. Dukes hurtling her bus around the corner to my stop, blaring out her call for the next generation of kids to get on board the school bus.  And I think of how embarrassed they’ll all be when they get to high school.