Reflections On LEHS Experience #1: I call this one "Sorry, Pete."

It is interesting to note that so little of my memory of high school has to do with academics. In fact, my only two real memories of the first day at LEHS had nothing to do with the school day at all.  These two experiences weren’t even remotely akin to trying to locate my Biology class, or avoiding the upperclassmen who would try to direct you to the nonexistent fourth floor pool I had been so warned about by my siblings, but rather, I remember very clearly standing in front of the main door in my new pastel green skirt and white cowboy boots coming off of the morning bus, and the Drama Club meeting after the 2:30 bell. The former memory is merely me, completely unsure of what is to come on that fateful first day of high school, the latter is pretty much how the rest of my life panned out.

I had chosen carefully the outfit I was going to wear but I do remember that the weather was not necessarily cooperating with my choices. It was unseasonably cool that morning and my sister’s boots had become damp on the inside from walking across the campus grass. I was a good six to ten months younger than most of my classmates but unfortunately taller than most, with feet that could fit inside a twenty four year old’s cowboy boots.

 My height had plagued me since I was in sixth grade, and here I was three years later, an inch and a half shy of the full 5’9” I would eventually reach and I was working hard to stay cool, blend in, look natural, with wet feet and ruined boots that would catch me all sorts of hell as soon as I got home. But I couldn’t think about that yet. I was focused on what did I look like? Standing here, did I look like this was normal? Did I belong? How about here?

To this day, I see pictures of myself from back then and can’t see anything but the head towering over the boys nearby, the white and pink knobby knees the only curves I possessed. Even now I can’t forgive that skinny little thing enough to even think that she may have been okay looking – her hair was pretty good, right?  No, I was so wrapped up in that pubescent awkwardness that I still have a difficult time looking at that poor girl with any objectivity.

The drama meeting had been one of the hundred announcements coming over the crackly loudspeaker that morning, after our moment of meditation and reverent silence that was intended to allow room for school prayer if one was so inclined. In all four years I was there, I didn’t know anyone who really was.

Since the third or fourth grade, when I had first seen my older sisters come out from behind that black and gold curtain at an assembly at the big high school auditorium, I knew I wanted to be in the Lynn English High School Drama Club. The DC performances had been stuff of legend in Lynn during those years just previous and even the new director, and all of the changes that the old director’s hasty removal had implied, still couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm to be close to that magical place in my own right. My new friend Heather and I looked at one another across homeroom and silently agreed to go right to the theater after school got out.

I had only met Heather at the bus stop that morning. She was new to the neighborhood and I had seen her around once or twice over the summer.  I was glad that she was in my homeroom and we could take the later bus together after the meeting. She was a nice girl, with a big smile and tiny teeth. We sat together in the huge theater, a two person homogeneous grouping clinging together for safety, a vestige from our junior high school days when the girls ran in deep packs. It was better not to be noticed individually just then, we were not quite ready to be unique just yet. Heather would leave LEHS at the end of the school year, and I would not see her again until at a party after graduation at a mutual friend’s who had bothered to keep in touch with her.

The meeting mentioned something about upcoming auditions and a production in early December and then quickly wrapped up. I don’t remember much about the content, but I do remember that mostly everyone hung around talking. We stayed, lingering for a minute, not sure if we should go yet or maybe we would miss another announcement. Two boys approached the two of us. I could see they were older boys. Senior boys, as a matter of fact. One had a backpack and one had a case I could only imagine held cassette tapes.

The cassette tape one seemed to take a lot of pride in the case and made a great show of displaying its contents. He could have had it handcuffed to his wrist and opened it with a key, it wouldn’t have really added much to the performance. He made a good deal about setting it down gently on the seat in front of us and making sure the seat didn’t tip back as they introduced themselves.  The four of us chatted well enough, and I peered over at the cassette tapes and noticed something familiar.

“Hey, I have that one,” I nodded.

The older boy took a moment, his eyebrows went down. He smirked right at me. “That one?”

“Yup.”

He asked again, “That one?”

“Yes, that one.” I affirmed. His obvious disbelief annoyed me.

“Oh-kaay,” he dragged out the syllables and he smiled at his companion, like he knew something.

What? Why couldn’t I have that tape? “I’m not kidding. I have that one too.”

He looked down at my second choice, “Yeah,” he nodded. “Sure.” He was nodding but not agreeing. He was agreeing but not believing.  

He didn’t believe me. Why wouldn’t he believe me?

I folded my arms, “I’m telling you the truth.”

“I’m sorry.” His superiority was maddening.

“For?”

“No one has ‘Nursery Cryme,’ you have to special order it,” he replied smugly. So smug. So smarmy. “It takes six weeks.”

This was completely infuriating. Why would I lie about something like that? I don’t even know him, why would this boy think I was lying?

“I know. My sister works at a record store.”

“Of course she does.” He and his friend laughed. He closed his precious tape case. “You know what, suck ups, let’s show you the auditorium.”

They escorted us around the entire theater and made jokes at our freshman expense. I don’t know why I let them, I was seething.  Weren’t they talking to us to be friendly? That little exchange was decidely not friendly. I tried to make light of it, tried to be game about it, but honestly, by the end of that tour, before Heather and I in my ruined boots would breathlessly catch the late bus home, I firmly concluded in my head that this older boy, this senior boy with his stupid - well, not stupid because I had a lot of them at my house - with his cassette tapes was a complete and total asshole.

And I just realized that I will be married to that asshole fifteen years this June.