19 June 2007
I knew from a very early age that I was a misfit, from a family of misfits, and I have watched with awe and admiration the ease with which some people can be charming, charismatic, attractive, sought after; and belong. More than anything I wanted to belong somewhere, or at least to not be so noticeably a D+ student in the School of Life. But the only times that has happened to me were the magical times that I found other misfits to belong to.
No one else in my family seemed to care whether they fit in or not. Keith never spoke much, attended to his studies, played the piano, went caving and, if he felt stressed, went off on his own to climb Mount Witney. Steve grew a beard and long hair and, inexplicably, wore a top hat wherever he went. (My mother pleaded with him to lose that hat to no avail.) And my sister would burst into operatic song for no apparent reason in the most inappropriate of circumstances. But I was different. I wanted, and still do want if I’m honest, to conform.
And so I was lonely. Though my grandmother insisted that the reason I was teased so cruelly at school was because my classmates were jealous of my intellect (God bless her!), I came to accept the pain of it like a lifelong arthritis sufferer, and escaped into a world of my own making. A world of pretend.
When I was nine years old the eighth grade girls were preparing to put on a school Christmas performance of the operetta Amahl and the Night Visitors. My passion for a pretend universe having been noted, Sister Lydia asked me to play the part of Amahl, the eponymous eight year old (I love that word – I learned it from watching the film critic Barry Norman on TV!) who encounters the Three Kings on their way to Bethlehem and is cured of his lameness. (Yes, I played a boy, and the other girls played the Kings). My character’s lameness, believe me, was nothing compared to that of the production itself, which was performed before the school assembly, standing (not sitting) outside in the playground as we mimed to Sister Lydia’s scratchy record of the operetta as it played over the public address system. At the end, when we took our bow, the whole school erupted into applause, so delighted were they that the performance was over.
The experience gave me an idea, however, and when Easter came I wrote a play about the Last Supper for my fourth grade class. It was a bit of an extravaganza because I had to cast all twelve apostles and dress them up in sheets to look like those robes you see on the statues in the church. The geeky kids were easy to recruit (like me they would d anything for a chance to stand out), although no one wanted to play Simon the Cananite, who nobody had ever heard of, or the villain, Judas. But there were simply not enough geeky kids to go around. That’s when I was approached by Susan Tratz and Patty Scanlon.
Susan Tratz was a brassy, very savvy girl whose breasts, at the age of ten, were already apparent. Patty Scanlon was slightly knock-kneed and skinny, something she hated because this was (if any of us are old enough to remember it) when curves were in and thinness was out, and Jean Shrimpton was considered so much sexier than Twiggy. Susan and Patty were two of the most popular girls in school and they were intrigued by the idea of being in a play, even if it was written by me. They insisted on playing Jesus and Peter (the starring roles) and, though the entire production was a bit of a debacle, everyone involved seemed to have a good time.
Susan and Patty appeared to change their attitude to me after that. When I was asked by Sister Irene to write a Christmas play for the second grade girls, I wrote one about a Christmas in occupied France during the Second World War involving a class of French children and their two teachers. Pandering to their proximity to popularity, I wrote the parts of the two teachers for Susan and Patty.
After that I seemed to be taken under their wings. I started to write stories, in instalments, about Susan, Patty and all their friends, set in the future, when they would marry the guys of their dreams. It was what they wanted and I had yet to discover artistic integrity. These stories, which I wrote furtively in maths, science and history classes (which I really loathed) were circulated around the class among the popular girls whose appetite for them was insatiable.
Susan became my mentor and confidant. She took me in hand and got me to shower every day, stop picking my nose, do something with my unruly hair, find some more attractive clothes and to rein in my conversation. Not everyone, she told me, was as keen on The Man From UNCLE as I was, particularly not to the point of buying a plastic Man From UNCLE gun with plastic shoulder holster. And she told me very emphatically what to do and not do with boys: it was absolutely “making out” only, no tongue, otherwise you were a slut. She was saving her virginity, she told me, as a gift for the man she’d marry on their wedding night.
By the following year, Susan and Patty both had boyfriends. Susan was walking home from school (we were too young to date!) with the gorgeous Jim Frelita and Patty with the ultra-cool Tommy Houlihan. They thought it was about time that I had a boyfriend too and Jim and Tommy had just the candidate: their own geeky friend, Marcel Fischer who, understandably, was only ever called “Fish”. The four of them fixed it up for us and, behind the gym at a nearby boys’ school basketball game, I was kissed for the first time. Fish gave me his green St Christopher medal which meant, as everyone knew, that we were going steady (don’t ask why a St Christopher medal. I didn’t even know why back then and anyway St Christopher has now been demoted from his sainthood by the Vatican). Amazingly, he didn’t ask for it back for another two whole weeks.
As we neared the end of eighth grade, we looked forward to going to high school and entering a more grown up world. My mother wanted me to go to the local coeducational Catholic school that my older sister attended, but Susan and Patty had opted for the single sex Catholic school on the other side of town. They assumed I would go there with them.
My mother had by this time decided that, in light of her experience with my older brother, she would let me choose were I wanted to go. It was the first time I ever had to make my own choice about anything important and I was terrified.
Though I was grateful for her friendship over the previous four years, I realised that she had become the most forceful presence in my life and, though it had never made me one of the popular girls (only a sideshow for their amusement) I had done whatever she told me to do in a desperate bid to ride on the coattails of her popularity. And I knew it was time to break free. She told me I was making a mistake. And in my first year and a half at my new school, as isolated and lonely and bullied as I had ever been, I had begun to think she was right.
We stayed in touch for the first part of our freshman year, but drifted apart after that. A few years later I heard she’d had a surfing accident. A wave caught her the wrong way and she flew into the air, the surfboard twisted over and the scag hit her between the legs. So she was never able to give the gift of her virginity to her husband on their wedding night.
Fortunately she did not give birth to a bouncing baby paddleboard nine months later.
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I knew from a very early age that I was a misfit, from a family of misfits, and I have watched with awe and admiration the ease with which some people can be charming, charismatic, attractive, sought after; and belong. More than anything I wanted to belong somewhere, or at least to not be so noticeably a D+ student in the School of Life. But the only times that has happened to me were the magical times that I found other misfits to belong to.
No one else in my family seemed to care whether they fit in or not. Keith never spoke much, attended to his studies, played the piano, went caving and, if he felt stressed, went off on his own to climb Mount Witney. Steve grew a beard and long hair and, inexplicably, wore a top hat wherever he went. (My mother pleaded with him to lose that hat to no avail.) And my sister would burst into operatic song for no apparent reason in the most inappropriate of circumstances. But I was different. I wanted, and still do want if I’m honest, to conform.
And so I was lonely. Though my grandmother insisted that the reason I was teased so cruelly at school was because my classmates were jealous of my intellect (God bless her!), I came to accept the pain of it like a lifelong arthritis sufferer, and escaped into a world of my own making. A world of pretend.
When I was nine years old the eighth grade girls were preparing to put on a school Christmas performance of the operetta Amahl and the Night Visitors. My passion for a pretend universe having been noted, Sister Lydia asked me to play the part of Amahl, the eponymous eight year old (I love that word – I learned it from watching the film critic Barry Norman on TV!) who encounters the Three Kings on their way to Bethlehem and is cured of his lameness. (Yes, I played a boy, and the other girls played the Kings). My character’s lameness, believe me, was nothing compared to that of the production itself, which was performed before the school assembly, standing (not sitting) outside in the playground as we mimed to Sister Lydia’s scratchy record of the operetta as it played over the public address system. At the end, when we took our bow, the whole school erupted into applause, so delighted were they that the performance was over.
The experience gave me an idea, however, and when Easter came I wrote a play about the Last Supper for my fourth grade class. It was a bit of an extravaganza because I had to cast all twelve apostles and dress them up in sheets to look like those robes you see on the statues in the church. The geeky kids were easy to recruit (like me they would d anything for a chance to stand out), although no one wanted to play Simon the Cananite, who nobody had ever heard of, or the villain, Judas. But there were simply not enough geeky kids to go around. That’s when I was approached by Susan Tratz and Patty Scanlon.
Susan Tratz was a brassy, very savvy girl whose breasts, at the age of ten, were already apparent. Patty Scanlon was slightly knock-kneed and skinny, something she hated because this was (if any of us are old enough to remember it) when curves were in and thinness was out, and Jean Shrimpton was considered so much sexier than Twiggy. Susan and Patty were two of the most popular girls in school and they were intrigued by the idea of being in a play, even if it was written by me. They insisted on playing Jesus and Peter (the starring roles) and, though the entire production was a bit of a debacle, everyone involved seemed to have a good time.
Susan and Patty appeared to change their attitude to me after that. When I was asked by Sister Irene to write a Christmas play for the second grade girls, I wrote one about a Christmas in occupied France during the Second World War involving a class of French children and their two teachers. Pandering to their proximity to popularity, I wrote the parts of the two teachers for Susan and Patty.
After that I seemed to be taken under their wings. I started to write stories, in instalments, about Susan, Patty and all their friends, set in the future, when they would marry the guys of their dreams. It was what they wanted and I had yet to discover artistic integrity. These stories, which I wrote furtively in maths, science and history classes (which I really loathed) were circulated around the class among the popular girls whose appetite for them was insatiable.
Susan became my mentor and confidant. She took me in hand and got me to shower every day, stop picking my nose, do something with my unruly hair, find some more attractive clothes and to rein in my conversation. Not everyone, she told me, was as keen on The Man From UNCLE as I was, particularly not to the point of buying a plastic Man From UNCLE gun with plastic shoulder holster. And she told me very emphatically what to do and not do with boys: it was absolutely “making out” only, no tongue, otherwise you were a slut. She was saving her virginity, she told me, as a gift for the man she’d marry on their wedding night.
By the following year, Susan and Patty both had boyfriends. Susan was walking home from school (we were too young to date!) with the gorgeous Jim Frelita and Patty with the ultra-cool Tommy Houlihan. They thought it was about time that I had a boyfriend too and Jim and Tommy had just the candidate: their own geeky friend, Marcel Fischer who, understandably, was only ever called “Fish”. The four of them fixed it up for us and, behind the gym at a nearby boys’ school basketball game, I was kissed for the first time. Fish gave me his green St Christopher medal which meant, as everyone knew, that we were going steady (don’t ask why a St Christopher medal. I didn’t even know why back then and anyway St Christopher has now been demoted from his sainthood by the Vatican). Amazingly, he didn’t ask for it back for another two whole weeks.
As we neared the end of eighth grade, we looked forward to going to high school and entering a more grown up world. My mother wanted me to go to the local coeducational Catholic school that my older sister attended, but Susan and Patty had opted for the single sex Catholic school on the other side of town. They assumed I would go there with them.
My mother had by this time decided that, in light of her experience with my older brother, she would let me choose were I wanted to go. It was the first time I ever had to make my own choice about anything important and I was terrified.
Though I was grateful for her friendship over the previous four years, I realised that she had become the most forceful presence in my life and, though it had never made me one of the popular girls (only a sideshow for their amusement) I had done whatever she told me to do in a desperate bid to ride on the coattails of her popularity. And I knew it was time to break free. She told me I was making a mistake. And in my first year and a half at my new school, as isolated and lonely and bullied as I had ever been, I had begun to think she was right.
We stayed in touch for the first part of our freshman year, but drifted apart after that. A few years later I heard she’d had a surfing accident. A wave caught her the wrong way and she flew into the air, the surfboard twisted over and the scag hit her between the legs. So she was never able to give the gift of her virginity to her husband on their wedding night.
Fortunately she did not give birth to a bouncing baby paddleboard nine months later.
If you would like to comment on this post, please click on the word "Comments" below.
1 comment:
Donna we have all read your blog and our anxious to speak to you!!! It was heartfelt and very compelling! Please email me when available:
suedroche@yahoo.com
The Poplular Sue T and Patti S
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