Blink three times.
“Tell me
Tell me why
Tell me why you’re so different from the others.”
I’ve already told you.
“You haven’t said anything yet.” Mrs. Harris flips through an entire binder full of laminated records and her acrylic nails go clickity-clack. “Your third school in a year. Impressive.”
“Ms. Dougard paid a visit to my office the other day.” She waits for a reaction but my mouth stays shut. “Coming to class with an unexplained bloody nose is one way to land here. And on the day of a test. Mind telling me what happened?”
Seasonal allergies.
Smacked into the sharp corner of a locker.
Fist fight in the bathrooms.
Mrs. Harris pinches my American History exam by a corner, the bloody rag. Section two, The Civil War, question thirteen. The answer is C, eleven states seceded. Question fourteen is B, 1862 and 22,717 are dead in Antietam. Fifteen is C again. Bad dad cab dab.
“Your grades are good,” Mrs. Harris says to me. She nods her head and leans in, trying to see what’s under the hood of my baggy sweatshirt. “So that’s good. It’s important.” All hopeful and sweet. She scans my records again, safely slipped inside of a plastic sheet, away from my nose and my brain blood.
“Your grades are better than good. They’re perfect. You’ll graduate with honors.” She looks over to the blood-soaked History exam. “But they’re not even gonna let you rehearse if you keep getting yourself into trouble like this.”
“If you need help
If you need help, or someone to talk to,
If you need help, or someone to talk to, therapy is
Listen, just try to keep your fists out of your fellow student’s faces.” Mrs. Harris says with guilt in her grin. “Just for another five months. Then you’re out of here. And you can go anywhere. You can go anywhere.”
Mrs. Harris sits back in her chair and lets out a long, frustrated breath. “If you could go back and do it all again,” she says. “What would you do different?”
I think on it for a minute. From under my hood I say, “I would have asked for one of those candies on the desk when I walked in. One of them blue mints.”
Mrs. Harris drops her head as I suck on a tart mint. “You did ask for one.”
You blink and it’s over.
“Look,” Mrs. Harris goes. “High school is tough. But there aren’t any do-overs. So make this count.”
Blink.
“High school”
Blink.
“High school is tough.”
Blink.
“High school is tough. But there aren’t—honey, your nose is bleeding.”
---
I wrote this story some time ago and I thought some of you might enjoy it. This one has gotten mixed reactions--people have either thought it was awesome or didn't understand it. I'm curious to hear what 'yall think!
I quite enjoyed this because I relate so much to this. In high school and even now I sometimes put on a great front and act pleasant and outgoing. But a lot of times I was seriously disconnected from everything. Sometimes I would feel like I was watching myself from above - looking down at that girl having conversations or interacting or simply walking to the bathroom. It didn't have to be a stress filled situation for me to pop out either. I would be bored, or my mood would shift and I would just be above myself as I watched myself go through the bullshit of being nice and asking questions and answering and being polite to the people around me and teachers.
It was much more common in high school because I had no friends my age - most had already graduated or went to a different school than me - and I felt above the petty bullshit of high school drama. I felt indifferent to the teachers pounding our skulls - "your entire life is now and you must go to a 4-year university to have a life, and this next essay will decide your fate." I had a big group of friends that all worked in music or television and didn't go to university and just worked and partied and got drunk and played chess and made (what I considered) a lot of money. I played the game of high school though. I played my cards right and graduated with like 6 aps and a 4.0 even though I know I should've gotten a B in a few classes like pre-calc. But I played my cards and gave the teachers the respect they deserved - a mighty difference from most of the kids around me. And I would get a an 86 on my final and an 88 in the class but an A showed up on my report card weeks later.
I looked the entire high school experience like a game. Play the game right - be nice to people and you won't be noticed.
But outside of school I was happy. I had a great boyfriend who I still consider is the one who got away. I fucked that up because I didn't play the game with him. I wanted to be real and honest with him. We loved cocaine and started selling it and made (what I still consider) a complete fucking buttload of money. I loved cocaine and I loved when I was high - but I would pop up when I wasn't on it. I would pop out and watch myself fight with him. We'd have the most intense screaming matches - both of us wer hard-headed & would stubbornly escalte a fight over how much to cut this batch of blow or where to go to dinner to world war iii levels. And I would yell and scream and say horrible horrible things that tore him apart. I knew him and I knew how to get deep inside him and fuck him. And he would do the same to me. But I would be above, looking down on the tiny converted garage bedroom we had as we kicked and screamed and spilled leftover cans of bud light. And when the dust would settle I would come back down and feel absolutely fine. Like nothing had happened. I would barely remember the things I had said or the things he had said. And he pretended the same. But he remembered and eventually the love that we felt for each other and the amazing 99% of the times we had were drown out by the fights - the words that stuck inside him.
As far as I know, no one could tell when I was up in the clouds but I have entire days and weeks and moments that are a blink in my memory. Thousands of minutes of classes, thousands of interactions with the other 1000 kids at my school that I know I talked to, but I don't, thousands of fights and spats and arrogant remarks that I would hurl at my boyfriend because I didn't feel like playing the overly social nice game with him. And because I thought I had to be nice to teachers to stay out of trouble, and I have to be nice to classmates to go unnoticed, but I don't have to be nice to him. There was no rule that applied to our relationship.
But life doesn't really have rules like highschool. In high school you are forced to interact with these people. These people who you really only share an age with. And be nice to teachers because you are told to be nice to them. Not because they have done anything to earn your personal respect. And it's easier to blink and pop out and disconnect and go through the motions. It's not fulfilling - but not much in high school is. Once you really truly make your own decisions and choose the way you want to handle things - that's where fulfillment comes from.
I still fight with my current boyfriend and pop up into the clouds but I try not to. I rarely go up there now. And I think it's because I am fully intrigued and entertained my the decisions I make, the things I create at work, the glory of where I live and what I do and who I interact with.
I can royally fuck my life or make the best impact on the people and things around me and it is 100% me. So I try not to blink anymore.
ps: I told you so :D