Posts Tagged High School

Just two words we often forget to say.

Posted by Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom in Stories, Writing on November 6, 2008

Braden has learned how to say “please,” when he wants something. He also says, “thank you,” and I’m struggling to make sure he understands how to use that phrase properly.

It’s so important.

Do you remember your senior year in high school? Teachers who were just so out of it? Do you remember all the things that were so very important to you?

So little that had previously been important to me was still important to me that year. I had always done well in school, had genuinely cared about my performance. Something shifted in me that year.

I just didn’t care anymore. College was just around the corner, and as such, you’d think I’d have been more worried than ever about letting my grade point average slip.

But no. I skipped classes. I diddled and ignored what was going on while I was in classes.

Some of my teachers doubted my actual abilities; how could they not? One of them for sure did not.

She wore stockings with open-toed sandles. Her hair was short and very permed. She spoke sort of strangely. She was totally into Beowulf. She was the perfect target for mockery and insult.

And that’s what I used as my shield of defense. While she worked to crack through my Senior Year Apathy and inspire the student she somehow knew was hidden within, I deflected her efforts by mocking her mentally. I made her into an icon of ridicule in my mind, so I wouldn’t have to admit to myself that she was right. That she cared.  That I should listen to her.

The soft-hearted part of me would have never been able to keep it up. Not if I allowed myself to see her as a real, caring person.

So I mocked her with friends. We made fun of the strange way she talked, her appearance, her quirks. We laughed, we told jokes.

I was obnoxious to her. I didn’t finish work on time. I tried to avoid her. She persevered and she got to me.

I told myself I was performing just to get her off my back. She taught me things. I wrote better and better. I saw her for real. I appreciated her. I did not admit it to anyone.

I never thanked her.

In college, my performance in English and with other writing was directly affected by her earlier attention to me. I applied things she coached me on when she was forcing her way persistently through the stupid shell I was sporting back then.

I never thanked her.

She used to come in to the Diary Queen where I worked while I was in college, with her husband, and she would ask me about how I was doing. She would tell me what a good English major I would make. That I could be an excellent writer. She was proud of me. It made me feel good about myself. I appreciated her.

I never thanked her.

I heard rumors through the grape-vine of a small town. And I began to see that she seemed more frail when she would come to the store with her husband.

I never thanked her.

One day, her husband came for ice cream alone. And every time after that, he was alone.

I had never thanked her.

The brain tumor had claimed her life, and for all that she gave me, I never thanked her.

I never thanked her.

Just two words, but a huge regret.

Thank you, Mrs. Tester.  Thank you.  I’m sorry it was so hard for me to learn how important it is to say those words.

Thank you.

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Looking back with the new eyes.

Posted by Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom in Love, Relationships, Stories on August 5, 2008

I'm in my car, driving home....It’s something like 6AM in the morning and I’m in my car, driving home. The windows are down, and the breeze pushes long strands of hair past my face now and again. There’s music on the radio, and some part of my consciousness acknowledges that, but the dominant sound in my mind is a soft rushing, maybe like the sound of moving water. It’s comforting, and at the same time the edges of it pulse excitement. I’m somehow disconnected from my surroundings, and at the same time, I am recording them in some part of my brain, a running log of experience and environment. The sun is warm through the window even though the air is crisp. The still, green grass flies by on either side of the hard, black asphalt. It is September, 1994. At the end of next month, I will be 18.

I am way more relaxed than I should be. I have no idea exactly what awaits me at my destination, but I know it’s not going to be very far on this side of good. I did things last night that I probably should not have, and still, I feel the quiet stillness of being that comes with justification. I’m not worried. Some part of my mind thinks I should be, but I ignore it. The rest of my consciousness rests on high ground. Or perhaps, it just sits wrapped in happiness.

I’m hungry. My physical body is nagging me to stop daydreaming and disconnecting myself from reality. I turn off to a fast food joint and order a special love of mine: hash browns. In your youth, you can drop these down your throat in multitudes without paying the price. Like a blessing, I know this, and I take advantage of it, one of many small pieces of pleasure that is often wasted on the young of form. I dawdle with my ketchup packets and my orange juice before driving onward. I’m not in a hurry, obviously.

At the same time, I am eager. Eager to make the confrontation… if that is what it must be. I am right in my mind, and even if I can’t persuade them of that, I don’t care. Here, in a rare moment, I don’t need to be right for anyone else. I’m on the verge of something I’ve never felt before, and it’s spilling over into the rest of my character with no stoppage. The flood gates have opened, and this warm thing is coming through them, this demanding feeling. It is new to me. He is new to me.

I have no idea what the future will hold, but I know that I’m already obsessed, wrapped deeply in a web that I don’t want to be released from. I’m already yards beyond the present emotionally, though in coming months, I will hold onto passing moments so fiercely that I almost seem to be demanding that time stop.

It will never be quite like this again. It will never again be this new, amazing, almost incomprehensible blossoming of hope and joy, excitement and rapture, obsession and passion, mixing and swirling with such force that it almost brings me to my knees.  I will never be crushed to my core so pleasantly again.  This is the part I’m not aware of at the time, what I cannot appreciate in that moment – this fleeting dimension of the first time one falls in love.

While I savor the fried potatoes in my mouth as I drive too quickly towards my angry parents, I allow the beauty of youth’s first love to wash over me and away, not holding onto it long enough.

Is it even possible to hold onto it long enough?

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