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2004-09-16 - 9:09 p.m. "Not You!!"
Kindergarten. I was pretty much numb for that whole ordeal. Thank God for the big laminated mint green name tag safety pinned to my giant butterfly collar. This is how all of the teachers and chaperones knew where to coral a sea of little people that just streamed off a big yellow bus. I was trying so hard to be "BIG" even though I wanted to hide under my blankie and CRY. First grade. Again a new school. This wasn't so bad because a few of my friends from the neighborhood were right there along with me. I can't remember anything traumatic. Seventh grade. I just want to travel back in time and rescue myself from this horrible memory. First day at Performing Arts. Where do I start... This was like putting me on the moon compared to my other school I had just left. There I had been at my sheltered Catholic gradeschool in my drab plaid uniform and knee socks everyday. Any bit of individuality or creativity was promptly extinguished and strongly discouraged. Thou shalt be white, upper or upper-middle class, and may God have mercy on you if you don't quite make it into the upper class echilon of society because thou wilt be shunned by those who are BETTER and PRETTIER and RICHER than you. Thou shalt not wear your hair different, thou shalt not wear different shoes, thou shalt not listen to different music. Thou shalt be just like everybody else! Suddenly one crisp August morning in 1987, I was left standing on the stairs of this intimidating fortress in a state of bewilderment watching my Dad's car disappear off into the next block. Grades 1 through 8 neatly tucked away in a quiet little suburb was a thing of the past. It was now grades 4 through 12 in an enormous 5 story building in the middle of Over the Rhine in downtown Cincinnati! *choke* I didn't even know how to operate the weird combination locks we were all issued for our assigned lockers! Then my peers! *gulp* I saw pink hair. I saw liberty spikes. A-symetrical hair. Combat boots everywhere I turned. Just the year before, I had been these very people for Halloween!!!
Sadly, the coolots and Whimsies (shoes) didn't quite pull off the whole look I was going for. I thought punk rockers were mythical creatures that co-existed somewhere with unicorns and centaurs. So there I was cautiously scurrying up the front steps of the big formidable School for the Creative and Performing Arts. I had dressed in my best Swatch Watch gear and carried my matching Swatch Watch bag that had a big clock face on the front of it, my K-Swiss neatly laced, and two "fly" Swatch Watches on my wrist. All this garb was a big hit with my homies back in the 'hood. I put so much effort into looking halfway decent for my first day of school for some reason. There was only so much I could do to cover up the fact that my entire face was swollen to abnormal proportions, pussing and oozing with poison ivy bubbles. I wish I had had the foresight to wear a t-shirt or at least a button (some FLAIR) that read, "Ask Me About My Poison Ivy!" instead of my SWATCH sweatshirt, because to the untrained eye I bore an uncanny resemblence to the Elephant Man with a giant swatch purse. (No offense to John Merrick, God rest his soul. I'm just sayin'.) After being inside for about 10 minutes I came to the realization that my prized Swatch ensemble that was sooooo cool in my sheltered corner of the world looked STUPID, borderline RIDICULOUS at my new school. I may as well have thrown on a pair of big clown shoes that honked when I walked and a big red nose - as if the poison ivy weren't quite enough. Homeroom was in room 314. So there I was wandering around and around and around the hallways (that were situated in one great big continuous rectangle)trying to find it. I started off at the bottom floor. "Room 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115... no... no... 120... noo... 160... here's room 101 again... I'm back where I started. Maybe I will try the next floor." So there I went spinning aimlessly through the hallways as the tardy bell rang and the hallway population dwindled to ONE... ME. At this point tears were welling up in my tiny pussing eye slits and a big lump was developing in my throat. (Hey! What's another lump!) Finally I was approached head on by an angry and impatient old woman with cats-eyed glasses on. I later learned that she was Grandma Dynamite one of the security guards. She was the one who taught me that the room numbers started with the number of which floor they were on. So 314 would be (talking very slowly) on the thiiiiirrrrrrrrrd flooooooooorrrrr, 214 would be on the seeeeeccconnddd floooooorrrr, 514 would be on the fiiiiiiifffftthh floor, etc. Turns out this was a pretty valuable piece of information to a girl who had never been in anything more than a 2 story building with no rhyme or reason to the room numbers therein. Once I reached my homeroom I found an unoccupied desk as everyone tried not to STARE IN HORROR. I was sitting quietly at my desk when my attention was averted to a friendly looking girl excitedly waving out in the hallway. I glanced around me to see who she was waving to. No one else had noticed her but me. Was she waving to ME? I quickly glanced around again - no one else was waving back. She must be waving to me!? I thought. So I meekly waved back. Her smile quickly turned into a rolling of the eyes and an expression of TOTAL annoyance. "NOT YOU!!!!" she yelled and gave a motion of 'moving me aside'. Finally the proper recipient noticed she was being summoned and waved back. "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!" The girl out in the hallway's big smile reappeared. There I sat feeling like huge heap of fuming dung. I HATE it when that happens when my face ISN'T full of poison ivy. To make a long story short, I figured out my combination lock and found the rest of my classrooms with the nifty numbering system I learned. My poison ivy vanished a few weeks later and I found my niche in the "punk rock scene". I loved my new peroxided a-symetrical hair and my shredded army fatigue shorts were the BEST! Goodbye pastel pink and blue world!
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