Today we're gonna have a guest writer, ladies and gents. My mom, when she was sixteen.
Recently she found an old English paper marked 2/2/87, nicely typed. It was about one of her few running experiences. She's 16 at the time of its writing. It sounds eerily like...me.
I have also drawn visual aids to assist your imaginations as you read. Here you go.
Stefanie Black
College Comp.
#3, Essay
2/2/87
I like to be a spectator at most sports, and I even enjoy particiating in most of them, but if there is one sport I detest above all, it is jogging. Jogging, to me, is not a sport in the true sense of the word. You see, the word "sport" usually implies something that people would do for enjoyment as well as for recreation. Therefore, jogging does not qualify as a sport, although I admit that there are those insane fanatics who do indeed derive some pleasure from relentlessly jarring their bodies down miles of road every day. I must be the exception. They say that jogging's good for circulation, respiration, and perspiration, but I've seen whole rooms full of people getting more stimulation watching the second half of the Super Bowl.
I learned firsthand about the wonder and exhilaration of jogging while visiting my favorite aunt in California one year. I also experienced the feeling of completely jellied knees, and of having displaced various internal organs, some of which have never fully recovered.
To begin with, I see no reason why any normal person should, while on vacation, feel a need to atone for their sins, but California is a strange land. Thus, I found myself donning the uniform of a jogger and blindly following my aunt's "exercise routine" at 10:00 a.m.
"Believe me, Stef," she told me enthusiastically, "you won't believe how great it is to be out there, jogging down a peaceful country road, early in the morning. The view is also really incredible--you'll love it!" I wished we could just drive down to see this great view.
Before leaving, however, I learned that the conscientous jogger will not jog without first warming up with a "few calisthenics," I figured out that this tradition was started to either a) put off the moment of departure, or, b) to get the body into a state of semi-shock beforehand.
A "few calisthenics" and a half-hour later, I was ready to take on Jane Fonda--after I regained consciousness.
"Now," said my aunt triumphantly, "we're ready to go!" I started to ask her if she'd mind terribly if I stayed home and kept track of Donahue for her, but she ignored my pleas and helped me "briskly" walk the half-mile driveway to the road where, she promised, I'd find relaxation and contentment. At the main road, after looking around briefly, I announced:
She said it was okay, and that they were just down the road a piece. Now, understand that there is no known measurement for a "piece," and in this case it stood for about ten miles. I doubted I'd ever see them again.
On that cheery note, we set off down what really did look like a peaceful, country road. However, contrary to popular myths, California is not only a land of sunshine and freeways, but of avid country drivers, and the left-over monsoons from Asia. It was probably one of these little monsoons which caused the twenty-foot-long-two-feet-deep "puddles."
I thought that the land of 1,000 lakes was Michigan or someplace like that. I figured that with the new average of 1.6 cars per minute and forty-five of those killer puddles for every mile, within three minutes I'd start growing seaweed on the north side of my sweatsuit.
Undaunted by the continual stream of cars and water, my aunt kept going on and on. I began to notice a small pain in my side and decided that it was probably the cause of the spots I was now seeing, but being brave is part of being a good sport. I think my aunt's body was numbed to the abuse it was being subjected to, because she found it possible to keep up a running conversation (literally) with me. Probably trying to keep me from passing out.
I made a choking sound that meant a lot of things and kept jogging.
The miles rolled on by until, at some blessed, unseen command she stopped running. From behind, concentrating on the "exhilaration" of all this, I stumbled into her outstretched arm and collapsed facedown on the grass.
I stayed there awhile, and then noticed that the buzzing I'd been hearing was my aunt's voice. She was still pointing toward some distant misty hills covered with sheep and silhouetted nicely against the returning monsoon clouds.
Her eyes gleamed.
I stood up and focused on one sheep until it stopped spinning and the scene was no longer in black and white. "Yes," I said between gasping breaths, "Nice. How do we get home?"
She shrugged flippantly.
I thanked her for the experience and crawled home alone.
Words and art by Sabrina Smith copyright 2013
Not long ago, I was pouring orange juice and looking back on my wild youth. The first grade was an especially dangerous time. The kendama of the day was Betty Spaghetti, collectible bendy dolls with long rope hair from McDonald's. There were three different dolls, and I had all of them, as did most of the other girls in the class, except for the girls who always went to Wendy's. Every day, everyone would bring their dolls and play. The three bossiest girls would make the others go away, since there were only three different dolls, and two of one kind was forbidden. The bossiest of these girls always got the pink doll, whom we named Miranda (I always got the blue one, which I named Kitty). Then, we would play. It would begin with Miranda and her posse, Kitty and Hannah, having food and talking about boys. Miranda would then tell us we were going shopping at the imaginary mall, and btw guys, Kitty and Hannah were paying for all of it because Miranda was nice enough to be their friend. Kitty and Hannah promptly staged a coup against their tyrannical BFF. Without fail, whoever had the Miranda doll would stop the game, take away all the dolls, and leave. She later would be taken to the principal's office for not giving the dolls back to their owners. This happened nearly every day for a week, until Betty Spaghettis were banned from the school. The dolls from Wendy's were never banned, however.There was always a war going on between the Wendy's girls and the McDonald's girls, and many of the McDonald's clan were sorely tempted to cross over. We lost a few good souls to Wendy that week. No one was safe. You had to watch yourself.
We were all lost in our own little worlds, as many kids are. We didn't care whether we were invisible to anyone but each other. It was a fairly small PK-12 Christian school, much like the one where I attend school now. The younger students at my school are not invisible to us. If my shy, freakishly quiet first-grade self had known that the high schoolers--nay, even the third graders--were aware of my existence, I would have been mortified. I realized not long ago that not only did the entire student body know who I was, but I was also a bit infamous after certain events went down in the first grade. I was That Kid.
As aforementioned, I was very shy and very quiet. I was short and gangly and wore clothes from Other Mothers. I had a perpetual half-asleep perma-grin and classic Smith ears. I'd also cut off most of the front of my hair when I was little, so I had massive bangs that reached halfway around my head. I was that weird little girl who'd stare into the middle distance when people talked. For illustrative purposes, here's my school picture.
This pretty much what I looked like all the time. I could have been furious when they took that picture. Or jubilant. I wouldn't know. I only had, like, one and a half facial expressions.
I hardly spoke to anyone except my friend Amanda, and a kid I will call TJ. TJ was a stout boy with a crew-cut and a devastating insult for anyone who happened to have the misfortune of being not TJ. Any time I spoke to him, it was to fling a stinging comeback in his direction. He deflected it by crossing his arms across his moobs and screaming "COOTIES SHIELD" at the top of his lungs.
I mostly remember TJ because he was the first person to talk to me on the first day of school.
This moment ignited a longstanding enmity between me and TJ that lasted for the next four years. Everyone in our class thought we were in love with each other. Looking back, I can see why. We often sat together in class, trying to one-up each others' mad RoseArt skills. Sometimes we'd "race" each other on the swings at recess, trying to reach the highest altitude first. I always insisted on being a pony/tiger during these races. We would attribute our opponent's slowness to their gender, or that they were acting like a pony/tiger and if our swings' trajectories even remotely lined up, we'd shriek, "Get out of my shower!" because it was the only true course of action one could take in such a duel.
One one of these racing days, TJ and I noticed a group of big kids (4th graders were terrifying, tall, ancient sages to us) out with a few younger kids on the football field. Long story short, we saw some pretty aggressive physical bullying that day. I went home very upset, and my mom called the school.
The next morning, the principal announced a rally. The entire school filed into the gym, even the junior highers and high schoolers--creatures so ancient I had actually doubted their very existence. My principal, who looked like Tammy Faye Bakker, took my hand and pulled me to my feet. She told me to point out the boys I'd seen hurting people yesterday. Everyone was watching me. I panicked. I only recognized one boy, who was sitting with two other fourth grade boys. I pointed him out.
The principal accused all three boys of bullying and sent them to each class to apologize. I tried to tell my teacher that two of the boys had done nothing wrong. I don't think I got the point across.
Later that day, the entire school was told to go outside and march laps around the football field for as long as the teachers thought necessary. They said it was because bullying had occurred, and that I had not only been the one to point it out, but that I had also lied about who was involved.
Being an oblivious 6-year-old, I happily marched around and picked dandelions. It didn't occur to me that we were being punished, and that it was because of me.
So I wasn't exactly invisible in the first grade. In fact, everyone knew who I was. I guess I had a kind of notoriety that I was unaware of until a few years ago, when I ran into TJ, my old nemesis, who told me about it. I was That Kid, who messed up everyone's day one Tuesday in October, and I didn't even know it.
As I stood there in my kitchen with my orange juice, pondering this, my inner, shy first-grade self cringed. Then, feeling nostalgic, I pulled out my first grade pictures, and cringed again.
Words and art copyright 2013 by Sabrina Smith
